CenterFeud

Swift Boat Vets retrospective

AEI Magazine has a fascinating interview with John O'Neill, who spearheaded Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and authored the best seller Unfit for Command, both of which did considerable damage to John Kerry's presidential aspirations. He provides his perspective of the election, the role he and his group played, and the often-hostile treatment they received at the hands of the mainstream media who at first ignored them and then later attempted to discredit them.

For those of my readers who were Kerry voters and who view O'Neill and the Swift Boat Vets as nothing more than a blatant Karl Rove-backed smear operation, I urge you to take a few moments to at least read through his version of events. Some of it you have to take with a grain of salt - O'Neill portrays himself as something of naive vet, surprised by the controversy he unleashed in the 2004 election, while in fact he is an experienced lawyer who has worked in the past for political organizations. At the same time, his statements about Viet Nam, his role in the war, and the visceral reaction he and other vets had to Kerry's actions and his later portrayal of himself as war hero/war protester ring very true.

(Hat tip: Power Line)

John Perry Barlow has second (and third) thoughts about the election

John Perry Barlow is a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and a self-described "free agent and peripheral visionary". He is also a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for privacy protection in and out of cyberspace. He is a counterculture libertarian who hangs out on a cattle ranch in Wyoming and confesses to being a Goldwater supporter in his youth. And as you would expect, he is mightily bummed out over four more years of W. Trying to figure out the other half of the divide, he has a conversation with a houseguest who is a Bush supporter, which in turn sets off a chain reaction of admirable introspection, captured in his post "Magnanimous Defeat":

Still, despite a pandemic of pus-mouthed invective, the good news remains that there's been no shooting so far. Given the ferocity of our divisions, I feared violence would erupt during these elections. America has been acting like such an amateur at democracy that had once I feared we might go all the way to martial law. You will recall that, some months ago, I expressed the uneasy feeling that there would be another terrorist show-stopper right before the elections and they might be postponed indefinitely. Such fears seem absurdly hyperbolic to me now. While it is true that the country has divided itself roughly along the same regional lines that preceded the Civil War, see map, I don't really think were about to have another one.

Furthermore, despite the Patriot Act and many other insults to real freedom - as opposed to the rhetorical kind - I remain at liberty to be be as weird as I want as long as I don't scare the horses or smoke my drug of choice in public. In my cohort, there have been a lot of invidious comparisons between Bush and Hitler. I've even made some myself. While there is something marvelously invigorating about that kind of hyperbole, but it's simply not true. I don't expect any official visits at night (though I'm not a Muslim), nor do I believe there are secret camps being built. While I think that attacking Iraq was both immoral and impractical, it's hardly comparable to setting off World War II. Iraq may rhyme with Viet Nam, but Poland it isn't. It will be hard, but I resolve not to invoke historical admonitions unless they actually fit.

I've spent much of the last couple of days trying to remember more comforting historical analogies. I have a long history of pre-announcing The End of the World As We Know It. Clear back when I was a budding young libertarian, I believed that Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat by Lyndon Johnson was the end of conservatism in America. Boy, was I ever wrong about that. It took them a few years, but they came back with a vengeance of which the most recent election was, I pray, the high-water mark.

When Ronald Reagan was re-elected, I thought that really might be the end of the world. Literally. After all, Reagan was waving around MX missiles like they were cap pistols, talking about winning a nuclear war, and giving all appearance of believing that some combination of science, money, and hokum could shield us from Armageddon. The Russians were scared spitless and so was I. In the end, it was the Cold War that ended, not the world.

Barlow offers a simple tonic for blue-staters who are devastated over the results of this hard-fought election: seek out those other people and find out what the hell they were thinking. And in a non-vindictive way, let them know what you were thinking. When finished, do a check for residual insights. Barlow does this and comes out with this refreshing epiphany:

I have a terrible admission to make. I've been so fanatically opposed to this administration that I have taken dark satisfaction in their failures, even though they were American failures as well. I welcomed growing indications that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating into a sump-hole of back-alley insurgency. Good economic news was bad economic news as far as I was concerned, and vice versa. I was tickled to death with Al Qaqaa and its terrorist-purloined WMDs, and not just because the name was so great. Surely all these bad tidings would eventually add up to an indictment that would convict Bush in the eyes of the American people and they would rouse themselves from Fox-hypnosis and 'possum sleep and vote for change.

But it didn't turn out that way. While I still believe that half of America is hallucinating on hot religion and bad TV, I can't say I have been any too sane, having been delivered into a condition where I took comfort in the successes of our enemies and frowned at news of economic recovery. Despite my own financial anxieties, and those of all around me, I have been so zealous that my own well-being was secondary in importance to the political damage bad times might do the Bush administration. Now that's hallucination. And I'm sorry.

It's been observed that conservatives go about their daily affairs in full awareness of what liberal America is thinking because it's so manifest in the media, which maintains a more-or-less unconsciously center-left worldview; but liberals operate at a disadvantage in that they do not really understand the way conservative America thinks unless they make a special effort, i.e., listen to right-wing talk radio, or read conservative authors or pundits, activities that most liberals would find distasteful or a waste of time. And now there's a lot of talk about "reaching out", mostly meaning that the Bush administration should not shut out its erstwhile opponents but instead find ways to work together for the common good. That's all well and good, and I hope some of that happens - but the more important "outreach" activities need to be at the grassroots. Barlow, who can at least relate to libertarian conservatism, is willing to expend some cycles in the effort to understand the red-state mentality, which puts him way ahead of the game:

At the very least, I need to take the other side seriously. Dismissing them as a bunch of homophobic, racist, Bible-waving, know-nothing troglodytes, however true that may be of a few, only authorizes them to return the favor. I don't want somebody calling me a dope-smoking, fag-loving, one-worlder weirdo, however true that might be. We are all masks that God wears, whatever God that is. We might try to treat one another with according reverence. At least we might try to listen as though the other side might have a point. I truly think we all owe one another an apology.

Not a bad start.

(Hat tip: Instapundit)

UPDATE: Don't miss Dean Esmay's response to Barlow, in the form of a "Letter To John Perry Barlow From A Pot-Smoking Deadhead Bush Voter". Here's the money quote:

Am I a conservative, a "right winger?" Sure, I guess so, if you count someone who's pro-choice on abortion, is flabbergasted at the nastiness and selfishness and mean-spiritedness of anyone who would put someone in jail for smoking pot, favors gay marriage, supports human rights organizations, and would love to see a world united in democratic governments a "conservative right-winger."

I think what bemused me most when reading your missive, Mr. Barlow, was your description of the young man who was probably popular and on the football team and supported Bush, while you the nerdy outsider supported Kerry, and you saw the whole thing through some sort of 50s-vs.-60s lens. Nothing could show me just how insular so many on the left have become than that. Few of the war supporters I know fit such stereotypes at all. "Think for yourself, question authority" is something a lot of us sucked in with our mothers' milk--and by the way, you know we kids who were born in the 1960s are now in our 30s and 40s and parents ourselves, right? A lot of us grew up being told to question authority, and a lot of that authority we now question is the left-wing orthodoxy of your generation, an orthodoxy many of us bought into as it was taught to us in school, in the books we read, and especially in the universities, not to mention in a lot of what we see out of Hollywood today.

We came to reject a lot of that orthodoxy as we got older and learned to think better for ourselves--not because we "embraced the establishment," but because we were questioning the establishment. You may laugh, but a whole lot of what's "questioning the establishment" to you seems like the establishment itself to a hell of a lot of people like myself. Culturally, at least.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, especially if, like JPB you are are wondering how anyone in his or her right mind could have voted Bush in for a second term.

(Hat tip: Robin Munn)

How Michael Moore could have won Kerry the election

Roger L. Simon argues that Michael Moore offered Kerry a perfect "Sister Souljah moment" - and Kerry blew it.

Had he handled it the way Bill Clinton did, it would have been the bitchslap heard 'round the world.

Purple nation

We've all pored over the post-election red/blue map, either in triumph or despair. But the one that's up at Michael J. Totten's site tells a much different story.

Victor Davis Hanson explains why Bush really won

The mainstream media spin is that the Bush victory was all about "moral values", which is being interpreted as code language for opposition to gay marriage (I admit to falling for this myself). But research by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life doesn't bear that out. While 64% of the people polled identified "moral values" as being top on the list, only 34% specifically referenced gay marriage as the key issue in their vote.

In this year's election, "moral values" shared the spotlight with "terrorism" and "Iraq" as the top three reasons why people voted for George W. Bush. And this essay by Victor Davis Hanson explains what's really going on:

Despite losing the majority of state legislatures and governorships, the U.S. Congress, the presidency, and soon the Supreme Court, our anointed elite still doesn't quite get it. Middle America can be amused by, but still despise, Michael Moore. It can be uneasy with the pessimistic reporting from Iraq, but still be very much willing to finish the war and win at all costs. It may enjoy a trip to Europe, but does not wish to emulate the French, Germans, or Greeks.

The East and West Coasts and the big cities may reflect the sway of the universities, the media, Hollywood, and the arts, but the folks in between somehow ignore what the professors preach to their children, what they read in the major newspapers, and what they are told on TV. The Internet, right-wing radio, and cable news do not so much move Middle America as reflect its preexisting deep skepticism of our aristocracy and its engineered morality imposed from on high.

The Democrats now lament that America would prefer to be "wrong" with George Bush than "right" with them. They will no doubt adduce a number of other paradoxes, excuses, and sorrows. But the fact is that the Left was united, well-funded, and ran the most vitriolic campaign in the Democratic party's history — and still lost, taking all branches of power with it. The New York Times and the major networks have undone their legacy of a half-century, and in the desire for cheap partisan advantage have ruined the reputations of anchormen, the very notion of fair front-page reporting, and, indeed, the useful concept itself of an exit poll. 60 Minutes, Nightline, ABC News — these are now seen by millions as mere highbrow versions of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Much of the world — in Europe, among the dictatorships and autocracies of the Middle East, and indeed among the terrorists themselves — realized that the presidential election was a referendum on America's will in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So be it. Thus the president's victory is a strong message to the Arab League that democracy is coming to the Middle East as it did earlier to Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan, and a message to the terrorists that their beheadings, their sick infomercials, and their deified mass murderers will only earn a rendezvous with defeat if not annihilation. The farmers of Utah, the plant workers of Ohio, and the immigrants of Florida are not the same folk as those of Spain. America saw the election-eve face of bin Laden, heard his pathetic rant — and shrugged that he, not it, was going down.

Finally, with the Kerry defeat we should lay to rest the Left's latest revisionism that was much in vogue during the last few months in the mainstream media — promulgated by journalists and pundits in places like Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and the Atlantic. We were lectured ad nauseam that the terrorists did not — as did extremists of all ages such as the Nazis, Japanese, and Soviet totalitarians — hate us for our allegiance to consensual government, modernism, and the freedom of the individual, but rather had understandable grievances because of our support for Israel, the war in Iraq, or the presence of oil companies in the Middle East. That canard too was rejected by the voters.

Bin Laden's allegiance to fundamentalist fascism and hatred of the West may stay constant, but it is ignored by our intelligentsia, who instead gives credence to al Qaeda's various grumbles that have ranged from the U.N. embargo of Iraq to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia to, most recently, the supposed toppling of high-rise buildings in Lebanon. That there is now no embargo of Iraq, but U.S. aid; that there are no troops in Saudi, but increasing U.S. criticism of the monarchy; that Americans were butchered in Beirut and did not really retaliate but instead saved Arafat from his doom — all that apparently does not register with Bush's critics. In contrast, the majority of Americans insists with the president that the Islamic fascists have no more gripe against America than did a Tojo, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, or Khomeini — and that such nightmarish figures, not our values and policies, must and will pass away.

Hanson is writing about American exceptionalism - the notion that this nation is unique in the history of the world and its mission has been to act as an incubator for democratic values and to spread them throughout the world. One can argue whether the US has the right to do this, but you can't argue with the results of US sacrifice in World War II and Korea, plus its resoluteness throughout the long years of the Cold War. And in the past four years we have seen 50 million people liberated in Afghanistan and Iraq from two of the world's most oppressive and tyrannical regimes.

For me, "moral values" is not about opposing same-sex marriage (a cause that I wholeheartedly support), though I'm sure that's part of the picture for many. But at its core, "moral values" is about understanding that evil exists in the world and must be opposed, not explained away, apologized for, understood, or whitewashed in the left's language of moral relativism and moral equivalence.

We understand in retrospect that Hitler and Nazism was evil, but it was less clear in the 1930's when many were sympathetic to the grievances of post-WWI Germany. We understand that communist totalitarianism was evil, and enslaved a good portion of the world - but would have probably ended up accommodating it were it not for that unilateralist cowboy Ronald Reagan, who insisted that it belonged on the "ash heap of history". In 2004 Americans feel no remorse about deposing the Taliban, especially as we recently saw Afghans holding elections for the first time in history. But we forget that Afghanistan was the "quagmire" before the current one in Iraq, and elites in Europe and in our own country told us that it was immoral to bomb a country and potentially kill innocents to remove the Taliban, just as they told us that we had no right to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.

Those of us who voted for Bush in some cases did so because of his clarity on these issues, not his social agenda. Bush understands the nature of the threat and what needs to be done to remove it. He will pursue diplomacy but only if it leads to the desired result, not as an end in itself. He believes that liberating populations from oppressive regimes and helping them find a path to democracy is the only way to make us safe in a world where stateless terrorist groups can work behind the scenes with state sponsors to train, plan and prepare for devastating attacks on the liberal West.

In this war, we must give them no quarter, no chance to regroup. This will upset the moral relativsists, who believe we are no better than the people we are fighting, and see all violence as wrong. But I am now confident that the American people know better.

Post-election advice worth heeding

Staunch Moderate has some for both sides:

Conservatives -- You earned a solid victory, but this was a close election among a bitterly divided population. Despite the fact that your candidate at one point garnered a 90-percent approval rating, his re-election still came as a surprise to many. This, to say the least, is not a Carte Blanche mandate. While Bush has done some good things as president, he has also alienated half of this country and much of the world. Now this is not irreparable damage. Bush can continue his vision, but he must do it in a humble manner that brings back the disaffected. He needs to show that he's learned something from this election.

Liberals -- You lost. This is the second time you lost when it came to deciding how to defend this country. The 2002 midterm elections strengthened the Republican hold in Congress. This year, we just requested four more years of President Bush, based heavily on his war record. It's time for you to give up on the anti-war factions and join us in fighting aggressively for this country. If you do that, then you'll be able to gain enough power to push liberal social issues and prevent the far right from controlling the agenda. But the people in this country want to take a hard line against terrorists and Middle Eastern dictators. Please join us in the fight.

He also comments on the defeat of Daschle, setbacks for gay rights, gloom and doom (and hate) on the left, and what what the country needs to see in a second Bush term.

"He's so stupid..."

Gerard Van der Leun takes us back to a revealing conversation last spring about the intelligence required for leadership:

It was a smooth evening in Laguna Beach last Spring when I ran into her while going for some Indian take-out. She's a nice woman. Very intelligent. Very political. Very liberal. A good person. I like her.

"He's so stupid. So deeply stupid," she said while waiting for her to-go orders of chicken enchiladas prepared in the Mexican place down by the beach known for "authentic" Mexican food made fresh by "authentic" illegal aliens. "Don't you want a President who is smart? We have to have a President who is intelligent."

"Seems to me he was smart enough to get the job in the first place. You don't get the job if you're retarded. Besides, I don't remember a clause in the Constitution stating you've got to pass an IQ test to be President. And anyway, don't liberals always say there's no such thing as a valid IQ test?"

"Don't change the subject. Can't you see what's happening? Can't you see the censorship that's going on?"

"You got me there. What censorship?"

"This thing with Disney and Miramax. You don't really expect to see Moore's Fahrenheit 911 screened in this country, do you? We're going to have to have underground screenings in people's homes, you know."

There's more in this vein, and it looks like her worst nightmare came true, except of course the parts that didn't. Read the whole thing, especially if you know people like this, or can see one in the mirror.

Stronger at home, respected in the world

Arthur Chrenkoff observes, from his perch in Oz, that a new rapprochement between America and the rest of the world may be in the offing, now that Bush is a fixture for the next four years:

For the past few years, the "international community" has built its policy vis-a-vis the United States on an assumption that Bush, that uncomfortable aberration from Texas, would be a one-termer. Walled in inside their own echo chamber, reinforced and amplified by the American mainstream media's anti-Bush stance, foreign governments have managed to convince themselves that no incumbent could survive electoraly the "quagmire" of Iraq abroad and the groundswell of opposition at home. In other words, the leaders from Caracas to Paris, and from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, made the assumption that since they wouldn't vote for Bush, and the "New York Times" wouldn't vote for Bush, the American people wouldn't either - that is, for all the sophisticates' sneering about America and the Americans, the "unwilling" governments around the world thought that in the end the US voters would behave as "rationally" as the Belgians or the Jordanians would in these circumstances.

It was not to be. George W Bush has been clearly and convincingly re-elected and his policies at home - and most importantly abroad - re-endorsed by the majority of the electorate. And France, Germany, the EU, the UN, and all others are stuck with W in the White House for the next four years. Going back to the good old days of doing nothing and doing it all together is no longer a possibility.

Earlier today, I heard a comment from terror expert Michael Ledeen, indicating that Kerry had already put in place plans to have a state dinner at which he would issue a formal apology to Jacques Chirac. Fortunately, thanks to the wisdom of the American people, saner heads will prevail and Jacques will have to take a raincheck. The world has seen that Bush has warm relations with real allies (e.g. Tony Blair), and that he has no time for fairweather friends or faux amis. And as the threat of Islamic radicalism grows, as we are already seeing in Holland, the world will need a resolute America more, not less. Perhaps by the end of the next four years, there may be some recognition that what appeared to be "cowboy unilateralism" was what some of us knew it was - a resolute attempt to defend open, tolerant, liberal societies from an assault by those who would destroy them.

Sullivan on "moral values"

In the wake of the GOP's success last night, Andrew Sullivan surveys the fallout from the passage of state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, and in some cases going beyond that to rule out civil unions:

In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I'm not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply, deeply dispiriting nonetheless. A lot of gay people are devastated this morning, and terrified. We have seen, and not for the first time, how using fear of a minority can be so effective a tool in building a political movement. The single most important issue for Republican voters, according to exit polls, was not the war on terror or Iraq or the economy. It was "moral values." Karl Rove understood the American psyche better than I did.

The fear is real, and is deeply felt by my gay friends and acquaintances. Even as I support the president and his party in the war against the theocratic fascists of militant Islam, I will continue to speak out against attempts by the religious right in this country to impose their own view of morality through legislation. Yes, the majority should speak, but the constitution is designed to protect the rights of minorities. Even if you are not for changing marriage to extend it to same-sex couples, how can you justify denying legal mechanisms that strengthen gay families, protect children, and allow for hospital visitation and rights of inheritance? Do we need to institutionalize discrimination against our fellow citizens in the name of "protecting" the institution of marriage?

A uniter, not a divider

John Kerry had the choice before him, and it could have been ruinous. Thank God he has chosen to do what is in the best interest of the nation:

"Congratulations, Mr. President," Kerry said in the conversation described by sources as lasting less than five minutes. One of the sources was Republican, the other a Democrat.

The Democratic source said Bush called Kerry a worthy, tough and honorable opponent. Kerry told Bush the country was too divided, the source said, and Bush agreed. "We really have to do something about it," Kerry said according to the Democratic official.

Thank you!