CenterFeud

Why Europe and the Left will miss Bush

UK columnist Nick Cohen perfectly captures the realities of the post-Bush era, both for Europe and for liberals in general: "Why Bush has been a liberal's best friend."

By building him up into a great Satan, the oil man who invades countries to seize their reserves and the Christian who orders bloody crusades, [the liberal-left in Europe and North America] have hidden the totalitarian threats of our age from themselves and anyone who listens to them. Bush allowed them to explain away radical Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy. Even those in the European elites who do not buy the full 'America has it coming' package believe that Bush is a cowboy who doesn't understand that the postmodern way to end conflict is to compromise rather than fight.

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the 'root cause' of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired.

Agreed 100%. In many ways, an Obama presidency would be a relief, in that it would force the Democratic Left to confront the realities of an ideology of religious supremacism that stands foursquare opposed to all of its professed ideals. But since that ideology doesn't originate with familiar opponents, it may take awhile for the realization to set in. But those realities will be there to be confronted, and the illusions will last only so long once hard decisions must be made.

Once back in power, the Democrats will find that they can stay in power by pursuing popular programs here at home and putting out soothing idealistic rhetoric abroad, all the while quietly building on the assets left to them by the Bush administration, i.e., an emerging democratic Iraq and an al-Qaeda back on its heels after a stinging defeat in Mesopotamia -- a defeat Obama the Democrats would have gladly embraced to repudiate Bush and his war, regardless of the enormous cost. Fortunately, Bush made it easy by doubling down on the Surge, enabling that victory to occur at virtually no cost to the Democrats.

For their part, if the GOP is out of power, they will need to put country above politics and lend enthusiastic support to any moves by Obama to counter the influence and aggression of radical Islam, even if that means on occasion siding with the opposition party on principle, as did Joe Lieberman. Will the GOP have the courage of its convictions, even if they no longer call the shots?

Bush vs. Batman

Bush or Batman? Lots of people can't tell them apart.

Including, apparently, the Wall St. Journal.

John Bolton slams Obama's revisionist Cold War history

Former Ambassador John Bolton weighs in with a harsh analysis of Obama's  recent address in Berlin before a crowd of 200,000 Germans:

First, urging greater U.S.-European cooperation, Obama said, "The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together." Having earlier proclaimed himself "a fellow citizen of the world" with his German hosts, Obama explained that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Europe proved "that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."

Perhaps Obama needs a remedial course in Cold War history, but the Berlin Wall most certainly did not come down because "the world stood as one." The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator's own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War,Ostpolitik-- "eastern politics," a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance -- continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.

This is, of course, exactly right. The Cold War didn't come to an end because we all came together as one world to reject Communism; it ended in spite of a drift towards seeing the Soviet Union as a mirror image of -- and occasionally useful counterbalance  to -- to the excesses of American power. During the '80s, Ronald Reagan's hard line against the Soviet Union, which included basing medium range Pershing missiles in Germany, sparked massive protests across Europe. Yet, it was this hard line stance that convinced  the Soviet leadership that they would not be able to prevail in a confrontation with the West. The need to choose between guns and butter ultimately led to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and his polices of glasnost (political openness) and perrestroika (economic restructuring).

The Berlin Wall fell, in no little part because of Gorbachev's outreach to the West and his decision to not use military might to rein in Poland and other balky Warsaw Pact nations. But without the hard line -- and unpopular -- Cold War stance of Reagan, backed by Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, the Soviets would have pushed more aggressively for world domination, and reformers like Gorbachev would not have been ascendant,

Obama either forgets or ignores those lessons at his own peril. It is very possible that, should he end up in the Oval Office, he will be forced into a remedial course.

Do tell

15 years after the institution of "Don't ask, don't tell." a sea change in public attitudes towards gays in the military. From the Washington Post:

Today, Americans have become more supportive of allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the armed forces. Support from Republicans has doubled over the past 15 years, from 32 to 64 percent. More than eight in 10 Democrats and more than three-quarters of independents now support the idea, as did nearly two-thirds of self-described conservatives.

These numbers are heartening, especially the response from conservatives.

Obama: Building a religion

I am late to the party blogging on this extremely clever video that riffs on the Obama phenom. It's been out for several weeks (you can tell because there are no pictures of Jeremiah Wright), but it's a fun sendup of the candidate and his minions.

Obama's more recent, er, religious problems notwithstanding, there is no question that he is the most electrifying candidate in the race.

"George Bush, true Democrat"

Victor Davis Hanson points up the irony of how the US public, and particularly Democrats, have come to view Iraq: "If we fail..."

Prior to Iraq, there was some American guilt over past realism, whether stopping before Baghdad in 1991, playing Iran off Iraq, cozying up to dictatorships, or predicating American Middle East foreign policy solely on either oil or anti-Communism. Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing — and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker (“jobs, jobs, jobs”/”F—- the Jews”). Now the latter is the model of Republican sobriety.

Arab intellectuals and much of the Western Left once decried Bakerism and called for a new muscular idealism that put us on the side of the powerless reformers and not with the entrenched authoritarians. But if we fail in Iraq, then again, fairly or not, the verdict will be far more sweeping than simply the incompetence of the Bremer proconsulship or the impotence of the Maliki government.

Rather, the conventional wisdom will arise that an infantile Middle East ipso facto — whether due to Islamism, tribalism, gender apartheid, sectarianism, engrained dictatorship, or corruption — is simply incapable at this time of consensual government. Anyone who seeks such reform, whether in the Gulf, Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, is to be written off not only as naïve, but as reckless as well. A Libyan dissident, a feminist writer in Egypt, or an Iraqi intellectual who decries Western indifference to their plight or American tolerance of regional dictatorships will be told to quit whining and get a life, by a been-there/done-that American public.

Both carping hothouse Arab intellectuals and Western liberals should be put on notice of this change to come. However imperfect, however flawed, however improperly explained our efforts in Iraq were, they nevertheless represented a costly American about-face to offer something in the Middle East other than theocracy or dictatorship — something we are not likely to see again in our lifetime.

Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush’s embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history.

There is definitely a sense of having slipped into some alternate reality from the one I knew pre-9/11. I remember in early 2001 a sense of foreboding that, with the Republicans having won the White House, there would be a shift back to the realpolitik of Bush I and James Baker. The warnings of the Clinton administration about the strategic threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the urgent need to push for regime change in Iraq would be ignored, and we would continue to treat the Middle East as, in the words of Thomas Friedman, "a big dumb gas station". I fully expected the Republicans to stick to their traditional script, and ignore democratic reformers in the Middle East in favor of the usual dictators, tyrants and strongmen.

I didn't figure on George W. Bush, the most unlikely figure in the world to make democratic reform a centerpiece of Middle East policy. In a post-9/11 world, he concluded that there was no safety in the old "stability", only societies forced to choose between rule by thugs or theocrats, who would continue to demonize the West in order to redirect the anger and resentment of their people against an external "other", i.e. "decadent" democracies. Something had to be done to change that dynamic, otherwise it was only a matter of time before we were confronted with an alliance of terrorist networks equipped by their state sponsors with terrifying weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands and wreak social and economic turmoil. He concluded that confronting dictatorial regimes that were actively pursuing such weapons would be far less costly than fighting them when they had achieved their aims and had become emboldened.

It has now become fashionable to deride the so-called "neocons" as Machiavellians ruthlessly plotting global American hegemony, but an objective reading of their writings reveals an idealism rooted in the belief that America should stand with the forces of democratic reform and liberalism in places like the Middle East. Given a choice between coddling dictators and championing rule of law, the equality of women, and a free press, we should be unapologetically in favor of the latter. That support would not necessarily have to be military in nature, but diplomacy must to be backed with a credible threat of force or else it is ineffectual, especially in dealing with despotic regimes.

Now, with the neocons discredited and the general consensus that post-Saddam Iraq is ungovernable, we are back to a weird nostalgia for the dictators. James Baker is suddenly considered the voice of reasonableness by his erstwhile Democratic critics, even as he urges cutting deals with the likes of Iran's Ahmadinejad and Syria's Assad, who he assures us with a straight face have a long-term interest in a stable Iraq. Meanwhile, Iraqi democrats who risked their lives to elect a representative (if flawed and ineffectual) government are to be ignored. And bizarrely, Israel, the only true democracy in the region, is treated as a bargaining chip as we pursue the delusion that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the magic key that will resolve Sunni-Shia bloodletting in Iraq and cause Iran to abandon its nuclear program and ambitions to dominate the region. And these are the "realists"!

And in the midst of all of it, there's George W. Bush, his popularity in the toilet, his credibility losing altitude by the minute, his every statement second-guessed, his war-fighting strategy undermined -- and yet he keeps at it, sending in yet more troops to take on the militias and terrorist gangs that are determined to impose their will on post-Saddam Iraq and make it a base for jihad against the West. Many of us have checked out, having concluded this war is already lost and not worth a single additional American life. Others want it to be lost if only to repudiate George W. Bush, whom they despise more than Saddam Hussein, the late Abu Musab Zarqawi, or Moqtada Al-Sadr. Ironically, Bush remains a "true democrat" while his critics on the left and right seem to have retreated to the comforts and illusions of the old realpolitik.

But whether the so-called "surge" turns the tide or represents yet another failed attempt to stabilize Iraq, we should all be desperately hoping it succeeds. Because to hope it fails, or to express ambivalence -- as apparently one third of Americans do according to a recent poll -- is to objectively side with religious zealots, Ba'athist thugs, and ethnic cleansers against the majority of Iraqis who want to live decent lives, just because you don't like Bush and want him to go down. If, like me, you retain the liberal idealism you grew up with, that realization should make you shudder.

UPDATE: In a must-read essay on America's checkered history with Iraq and the choices the US has made over the years, Neo-neocon makes a similar observation:

The funny thing about the whole thing (and I mean funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) is that it is the neocon philosophy that represents one of the only strategies offering a possible way out of the realpolitik dilemma. And yet those who criticize our realpolitik decisions to back dictators also criticize our neonconnish decisions to overthrow them and try to institute a better and more democratic form of government. Odd, isn't it?

Election eve 2006

Partisanship has its advantages. Committed Dems and Repubs don't feel conflicted. They may not march in lockstep with their respective parties, but by and large they share in their respective worldviews. Even if you have friends or relatives across the aisle, you can still retreat to the solace of your own side and know that 50% of the country (give or take) is with you.

Kermit had it wrong - being green is easy. It's purple that's a bitch.

Though I am a registered independent, I am culturally a Democrat. I voted for Carter and Clinton, Mondale and even Mike Dukakis (yes, that Mike Dukakis, the one in the tank). I voted for Paul Wellstone (and still proudly stand by those votes). I'm all for gay marriage, I'm pro-choice, I think we need some form of national health insurance, and don't object to taxing people at the upper end of the income spectrum a few percentage points higher to subsidize public services like roads and parks and good schools and mass transit. I think racism, sexism and homophobia remain real problems. I think artists, writers and musciains should be free to express themselves without fear of censorship or intimidation. I don't want to see the environment despoiled for the sake of a few extra short term bucks. I fear the erosion of the wall of separation between church and state. I want to live in a country ruled by imperfect human laws, rather than those of God, which by definition cannot be challenged or even questioned. I hold deep suspicion of those with authoritarian impulses.

In short, I'm your basic liberal (excuse me, sorry, I mean progressive).

Except...

I think free markets create prosperity and excessive government regulation stifles innovation. I don't have a problem with wealth, especially as a reward for risk-taking and innovation. I fear government bureaucracies that want to regulate my life "for my own good". I never thought Castro, Che or Arafat were cool. I think the theocrats in Iran are far scarier than the ones here, and don't want them getting their hands on nukes. I think the UN is a corrupt cesspool that caters to the worst dictators on the planet, and is largely impotent when it comes to stopping bloodshed or saving people from genocide. I unapologetically support the right of Israel to defend itself from those who would recreate the holocaust if they had the means, even as they deny it ever happened. I watch in dismay as Europe complacently accepts and even embraces Islamism, even as it acquiesced to Communism and fascism in earlier generations. I view the War on Terror, including Iraq, as not another Viet Nam, but as a struggle like World War II, against a virulent and hateful totalitarian ideology that we must confront and defeat. I also believe that democracy and rule of law, in one form or another, should be the destiny of every society on the globe, and the alternative -- life under a global taliban-style regime -- would be intolerable.

So I suppose that makes me a conservative. Actually, it makes me a neocon.

I recently came across a brilliant essay by author Orson Scott Card that sums up my dilemma. It begins:

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

Tomorrow, there is a very good possibility that the moribund Democratic party will gain control over the House and possibly the Senate. Should that come to pass, its leaders will use their newly-gained power, not to defeat the forces of totalitarianism but to relentlessly undermine the effort to defeat those forces. Of course, they won't believe they are doing that at all -- they will see themselves as wresting control of the country from a power-drunk cabal of corrupt self-serving crooks who have misled us into a needless war from which we must now extricate ourselves. They will seek to reign in the power of the "American Empire" and as they succeed in that effort, the vanguard of a far more ruthless and unapologetic empire will advance, filling the vacuum.

In bringing about the change in direction demanded by their base, they will move to "redeploy" military assets, seek to appease and accommodate tyrants, place their faith in the UN and the "international community". They will watch from the sidelines as Iraq is divided up between al-Qaeda and Iran, as Iran goes nuclear, and as Israel is threatened with annihilation for having the temerity to even think it has the right to exist as a Jewish state in the midst of the Islamic world.

The Democratic left will quietly and without a fuss abandon their commitment to feminism and gay rights in the name of multiculturalism that holds that stoning women and executing homosexuals are just cultural differences we need to accept as global citizens. They will fall silent on the topic of religion in public life, when that religion is Islam. Rather than protesting the encroachment of sharia law, they will insist that we must accommodate the beliefs and practices of religious muslims, practicing self-censorship so as not to provoke violence over perceived insults to religious sensibilities. They will turn away as Europe descends into another dark ages.

Because of the stakes in this midterm, I am forced to consider my vote carefully. I have ended up favoring Democrats at the local and state level, while rooting for the Repubs to stay in control of Congress. Based on my reading of the polls, and my understanding of the GOP's get-out-the-vote strategy, I expect that the Senate will stay in Republican hands, but the Dems will wil control of the House (Speaker Pelosi, anyone?). Ironically, this may end up being the best outcome, as Democrats will once again have some semblance of national power and some ability to propose policies, but they will likely not have the numbers to override a presidential veto, or even to push through legislation without some compromise. This will force them to either govern responsibly or it will show them up to be incapable of doing so.

If the Dems have any hope of regaining their lost majority status, they will have to do better than the feckless and muddled candidate they put up in 2004, and their nebulous non-platform of 2006. They will need to stand for something. Anything. Ideally, I would like the Democratic left to stand for the spread of liberalism in a world that is increasingly moving in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, that requires conviction, a clear sense of right and wrong, and a willingness to fight a protracted war against a determined and ruthless enemy. So I guess those of us who really want to see liberalsim prevail are stuck with the GOP for the foreseeable future.

9/11 plus five years

The five-year anniversary of Sept. 11 feels like intermission. We are well into what will prove to be a very long war, and already it feels like we have lost focus. Conspiracy theories run rampant: some 36 percent of the American public finds it plausible that the US government was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks. The level of denial required to believe this is astonishing; you have to ignore the obvious fanatics chanting "death to America" and issuing fatwas declaring war on the west for over a decade and instead assume that the Bush administration, the managenent of the World Trade Center, the airlines, the military and the media were all in on a murderous plot and coverup involving minimally hundreds of people if not thousands. (Bonus points for implicating Israel.)

The big story over the weekend was the attempt by the Clintonistas to censor and/or kill off altogether ABC's docudrama "The Path to 9/11", apparently because it showed them to be as clueless about Al Qaeda as the Bush admininstration on Sept. 10. Because of all the furor, I actually bothered to watch it (I hadn't dragged myself to either "Flight 93" or "World Trade Center"). It was better than I thought, particularly the scenes set in Afghanistan. Although we were constantly reminded that it was a dramatization, etc. etc., it was a much-needed tonic to the usual hand-wringing introspection.

Having not posted all day, I was startled to see my traffic spike, almost all of it pointing to a 9/11 essay I wrote two years ago, entitled "9/11 then and now". How it is that this has particular essay has become a magnet for so many people I don't know, but it's still just as relevant today as it was in 2004, so I'll quote it here:

Three years later, on the anniversary of 9/11, nothing fundamental has changed. The ideology of militant Islam that wrought destruction on New York and Washington three years before has not abated. We have scored some major victories in the opening phase of the war: routed the Taliban, killed or captured two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leaders and destroyed their training camps. But we are fighting a worldwide ideological movement, not a single group, and the religious fanaticism that drove the 9/11 hijackers flourishes around the world and rises, hydra-like to attack mercilessly in country after country: Indonesia, Turkey, Spain, Israel, Iraq, Russia. It kidnaps and beheads hostages, murders children, blows up innocents whether they are dancing in discos or at worship in synagogues. Its targets are everywhere - Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and of course Muslims who do not subscribe to its radical and violent interpretation of their faith and are therefore considered enemies.

Unless we understand this, we won't win this war. We can be critical of our own society, we can flagellate ourselves over decades of shortsighted policies in the Middle East, we can try to be more sensitive and understanding of other cultures, we can try to imagine "why they hate us". But in the final analysis, the people we're up against are fanatical theocrats who want us dead. Period. They're not nice people and as much as we think conflict shoud be solved by talking it over, they really have nothing to talk to us about. We're just supposed to eiether die or accept our destiny as second-class dhimmi subjects of the global Caliphate to come. Not really that hard to get it, yet it seems that the entire world and a good chunk of the US desperately does not want to deal with that unpleasant fact.

The Times of London recently ran a piece entitled, "Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why not". And sadly, they were right on. In particular:

Moreover, to Islam’s further advantage, it has led most of today’s “progressives” to say little, or even to keep silent, about what would once have been regarded as the reactionary aspects of Islam: its oppressive hostility to dissent, its maltreatment of women, its supremacist hatred of selected out-groups such as Jews and gays, and its readiness to incite and to use extremes of violence against them. Mein Kampf circulates in Arab countries under the title Jihadi.

This is by far the most depressing aspect of the current political scene: the people who should have been most opposed to Islamic radicalism instead are wearing keffiyahs and marching in the streets proclaiming "we are Hezbollah". Cue Mark Steyn:

In theory, if you’d wanted to construct an enemy least likely to appeal to the progressive Left, wife-beating gay-bashing theocrats would surely be it. But Islamism turned out to be the ne plus ultra of multiculti diversity-celebration — for what more demonstrates the boundlessness of one’s “tolerance” than by tolerating the intolerant. The Europeans’ fetishization of the Palestinians — whereby the more depraved the suicide bombers are the more brutalized they must have been by the Israelis — has, in effect, been globalized.

But instead of the artful Steyn addressing the nation, we get George W. Bush, who understands the threat posed by radical Islam but is only capable of repeating the same formulaic phrases in speech after speech: "America is safer than it was, but not yet safe...We are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here..." If only he could be articulate as Steyn, or Christopher Hitchens. But then, we have the example of Tony Blair, certainly several rhetorical grades above Bush, and very articulate on the nature of the challenges we face -- yet still being pushed off the political stage in his own party.

In the final analysis, too many are unwilling or unable to contemplate what it would mean if the ideology espoused by the Taliban/al-Qaeda/Hezbollah /Hamas/Iran/Muslim Brotherhood were to sweep the globe and supplant our liberal Western civilization with its separation religion and state and its guarantees of personal freedoms. Five years after 9/11, my darkest fear is that we will know all only too soon.

Obi-wan Lieberman

"If you strike me down, I will only become stronger." Barry Casselman has some thoughts on why a Lieberman defeat in today's primary will probably be good for Lieberman's stature -- and how it will force the Democratic party to make some hard choices:

In the worst case scenario, Mr. Lieberman could lose the November election. In that case, he becomes a profile in courage - as John F. Kennedy wrote about the bravest senators in history, and a martyr to Democratic Party extremism. He would replace Arthur Vandenberg as the modern symbol of American foreign policy bipartisanship, one of the nation's greatest political traditions. He would no longer be the footnote in political history as the first Jewish nominee for vice president; he would be remembered as well for something more important, a rare figure of guts and honesty in the history of the Senate. For a man at his age, this is not a small outcome.

More likely, Mr. Lieberman will be re-elected to the Senate as an independent. Although many of his colleagues, as well as former President Clinton, support him and have campaigned for him in the primary, most have indicated they will not support him if he loses the primary. This would result in Mr. Lieberman being a genuine independent in the Senate, beholden to no party and no set of ideas but his own.

The new Senate, by all accounts, is likely to be close to a tie. As a man free to go where his conscience leads him, Mr. Lieberman would often be pivotal vote. The new Sen. Lieberman would be able to speak out as he had not before. Remember, this man ran seriously for president in 2004. He did not come close to winning, but he is not without big ideas and goals.

The newest chemistry for an independent Sen. Lieberman would be his instant leadership nationwide of the political center. He was chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, an intellectually important but politically weak centrist organization. His new role would be of another political order.

Independent and centrist parties, already just beginning to spring up here and there in the country, would have someone to rally behind and speak for them. The chemistry of the 2008 election could be profoundly altered. I suspect it would not help the Democrats.

I think Casselman's second scenario is the most likely -- that Lamont will triumph in today's primary, and that Lieberman will flatten him in the general election in November, emerging as the new standard-bearer for independent centrists.

The (comforting) truth about US politics

In the Weekly Standard, of all places:

On the global political menu of ice cream flavors, if we called George W. Bush vanilla and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad New York Super Fudge Chunk (with extra nuts), our elections give Americans a choice between vanilla and French vanilla. Elections matter and ideas have consequences. But the American political system has already worked out the biggest questions--democracy, free market capitalism, individual rights, suffrage, etc. Even in the most polarized of times, the differences between the parties aren't so stark as to warrant a manning of the barricades. That's a very good thing.

Yes it is, and in spite of the bellyaching and alarmist notions about a looming Red/Blue Civil War (the topic of a recent novel by a Harvard professor) we're damned lucky.

Once upon a time, I bemoaned US politics as a sham because Democrats and Republicans were essentially two sides of the same coin (as my radical poli sci professor used to say), without the range of political thought that could be found in, say, Europe. Be careful what you wish for!

As of late, I have come to appreciate our "big tent" two-party system, even though I myself would like to see a centrist third party emerge (my ideal combo would be economically conservative, socially libertarian and unapologetically and non-selectively pro-freedom/human rights). It remains impossible to win elections by pandering to your base - you can start there but you have to convince the 60% of the electorate that falls somewhere in the middle that your party either has a better take on the state of the world, better policies, or a more inspiring leader.

The GOP did it in the 1980's by converting blue-collar voters into "Reagan Democrats" and Clinton did it in the '90s by taking up the cause of welfare reform, promoting a strong economy and balancing the budget (it didn't hurt that Ross Perot split the vote both times). And I am convinced Bush won in 2004, not by demonizing gay marriage (although that helped rally his base) but by convincing liberals like me (and Ed Koch, Martin Peretz and Roger L. Simon) that he understood the stakes in the long war against Islamofascism, while Kerry came off sounding like an American Neville Chamberlain.

And as Cliff May points out, even with today's "polarized electorate" and the current Republican monopoly on power, we don't have anyone in the mix here like London's mayor Ken Livingstone, who speaks favorably about people going to Iraq or Israel to become suicide bombers. No, instead we get as the warm-up for the 2008 presidential contest, Hillary Clinton infuriating her natural base with her triangulating on Iraq and John McCain taking heat from his own party for pushing campaign finance reform and questioning the Bush White House on its definition of "torture". Partisans may not like it, but in a sense, this is American politics at its best. As I've said in my initial post two years ago, the so called "Second Civil War" may be fought on the Left and Right, but it will be won in the Center.