Ed Brayton says the Bush campaign “[is] a coordinated strategy of lying to gain votes. The Democrats do much the same thing, of course, but this particular type of dishonesty they have never been able to do nearly as shamelessly as the Bush campaign, which makes a living off of it.” (Emphasis added). This is astounding! When Cheney says that he and Edwards had never met before, Kerry’s media allies instantly scrape up moments when they met briefly at ceremonial functions, and splash these moments all over their news sites to portray Cheney as an out-and-out liar. They spin the recent Iraq report as though the fact that Hussein had no stockpiles of WMDs is somehow news. They treat Michael Moore as though he were a serious reporter of the facts.... When the Bush campaign lies, they are called on it instantaneously. But Kerry says for twenty years that he was in Cambodia, and it turns out to be a lie, and he gets more or less a pass on the issue. He refuses even to have press conferences—and nobody calls him on it. I understand that Brayton thinks Bush is a bad president and is running the War badly, but for godsake, to claim that the Kerry campaign is “not able to lie as shamelessly” as Bush is sheer blindness. Brayton is always willing to instantly see everything the Bush campaign does in the worst possible light—and to see everything the Kerry campaign does in the best possible light, and with every benefit of every doubt. (Witness his reluctance to admit the obvious fraud regarding the memos.)
That being said, however, I think Rove is misrepresenting what Kerry said. Kerry is saying that terrorism can never be completely stopped—something that, we all remember, Bush himself has admitted—but that we need to “reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.” This still ought to trouble us, however. Terrorism was a nuisance before—back when the Cole was bombed, when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, when the African embassies were bombed, when Bush Sr.’s plane was bombed. What Bush Jr. said in his War Message was that we can no longer regard terrorism as a nuisance, but must engage it head-on; combat it in a way that will eliminate it. Can that ever be accomplished? I don’t know. Like Bush himself, I doubt it. But let’s take an example from American history of our own domestic terrorism—lynching. In the 1880s, there were over 100 lynchings per year in the United States; more than 200 in 1884. (That’s more than one every other day for an entire year.) That number started to fall in the 1900s, as the result of many factors, fell dramatically again in the 1930s, until it was around one or two per year in the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement began—that is, when a serious attempt to eradicate these things was begun by the federal government. Statistics were no longer kept as of 1968. This suggests to me that directly engaging terrorism can be effective—but not, by a long shot, the sole solution. Ought we to have said in the 1960s, that lynching can never be stopped, “we need to just reduce it to a level where it isn’t on the rise”? Is that the right attitude to take? Kerry’s statement can be read—as can most of his statements—in two ways: either he’s being realistic about the immense gulf that separates us from the militant Islamic side of the world, or he’s proposing a policy of disengagement, where we just let people kill people. Given some of the other things he’s said, the latter seems to be the most reasonable interpretation. I think September 11th was, above all else, a signal that the militant Islamic part of the world is determined not to allow us to regard terrorism as a “nuisance” anymore. They are demanding that we confront them face to face. Saying that we ought to reduce them to a nuisance could very well be blinding ourselves to this fact.
Update: Mr. Brayton insists that he only meant that the particular tactic of misrepresenting the candidate’s words is unique to the Bush campaign. This is still absurd. Kerry and his cronies misrepresent the statements of Bush and his cronies constantly. (To name just one example, continue to say that Bush lied for saying that Saddam Hussein was an “imminent threat,” something Bush did not in fact say.) Now, it’s certainly true that there is a “coordinated and deliberate campaign to convince the public that Kerry has said entirely different things than he has in fact said,” but exactly the same thing can be said of the other side: the Michael Moores of the world are engaged in a coordinated and deliberate campaign to convince the public that George Bush has said and done things that are different from what he has said and done. (Incidentally, Kerry has said entirely different things than what he has said, it seems. At this last debate, he said at one point that Hussein was always a threat—and then said minutes later that he was not a threat.) I am not saying I’m not biased in my own way, and I don’t claim that Brayton is wrong in saying that Bush’s cronies misrepresent many of Kerry’s statements. I claim that Brayton does not call Kerry on this as often as he calls Bush on it, and certainly not as often as Kerry deserves. Brayton gives Kerry a pass, in the style of:
“Damn that Bush! Always lying!”
“But wait, Kerry lied about this....”
“Yeah, well, they all do it, whatareyagonna do?”
Brayton also says I’m wrong to point out the memos as an example of this bias, because “[i]t was written when the question of whether the memos were authentic was still entirely an open question.” Nonsense. It was obvious from the beginning that the memos were faked, to anyone not predisposed to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt. Now, perhaps Brayton is right to give Kerry the benefit of the doubt—like he says, a court of law would presume in favor of the accused—but this was a case of assuming the best from Kerry in the face of obvious fakery. As Justice Field said, “When we take our seats on the bench we are not struck with blindness, and forbidden to know as judges what we see as men.” Ho Ah Kow v. Nunan, 12 F.Cas. 252, 255 (C.C.D. Ca. 1879).
Brayton admits that he “tend[s] to focus more on Bush’s faults than Kerry’s, but I don’t think it is at all reasonable to claim that I just blindly accept everything Kerry says or that I give him the benefit of the doubt on the things he says.” Well, Brayton certainly does give him the benefit of the doubt, all the time—but I never said he blindly accepts Kerry’s every word. Indeed, Brayton is a hell of a lot more objective than most Kerry supporters I’ve encountered, and deserves credit for that!
Update 2: Well, I’m glad to see I misunderstood with regard to Ed Brayton’s views of John Kerry. The only reason I pick on him for it is because I respect his opinion, too, so it bugs me to see him hammering Bush at every opportunity and giving Kerry a pass. But I’m overly sensitive to that, I suppose. I hope by picking on Brayton to make him overly sensitive to his own bias as well.
I don’t think Brayton is right that “[t]he administration did sell [the Iraq War] as an imminent threat to the US.” Perhaps I missed it. As I recall, the administration said that Hussein had repeatedly violated various international requirements, that our suspicions were very high, that we had to act to back up the inspection demands because he could very well have nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, and, finally, that we had to stop this man from abusing the people of Iraq.
Finally, although I do “agree[] that [Brayton is] right in [those] criticisms of Bush” that I’ve read, I have not agreed with his characterization of Kerry’s “nuisance” comment, and believe it or not, this was the primary point of my post. (It got lost because I draft all my posts in stream-of-consciousness, and sometimes they don’t quite come out as I imagine them.)
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