Nov 22nd, 2004, 07:44 AM
Damn. Trying to avoid saying something that might piss people off made what I did say mushy...
I deleted the portion of that tirade that started off with "The closest thing to classical liberalism left in this country is called, sadly, neo-conservatism..." because I didn't want to get flamed by a Canadian, but then I read this:
Happy Thanksgiving
The case for unusually cheerful pessimism.
by William Kristol
11/29/2004, Volume 010, Issue 11
WE'RE CHEERFUL. Why not? Bush won. And he won while hanging tough in Iraq. There was no talk of exit strategies, no phony promises that we were soon going to draw down our troop levels, no minimizing of the difficulties of the road that lay ahead. There was only the promise that we would continue to shoulder our responsibilities and do our duty.
The president presented himself for the judgment of the American people with 150,000 troops in the field, taking real casualties and on the verge of launching a major offensive. The people didn't flinch. They showed fortitude and judgment, sticking with Bush and the difficult path he has chosen, a path in some respects made more difficult by mistakes his administration had made, but not one his opponent could be counted on to follow to success.
So the election was good news. And the two-and-a-half weeks since have provided more good news. Bush is determined to take control of his administration. He has thought through his second-term personnel and policy agendas. He seems determined to fix the dysfunctional relationship between Defense and State that too often hampered the execution of his foreign policy in the first term.
Moving Condoleezza Rice to State was the indispensable start. Strong deputies at State and the National Security Council should be next--deputies who can work with Rice and new national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and who know how to make the institutions work in accord with Bush's policy. Backing up the efforts of Porter Goss to shake up the Central Intelligence Agency will also be important. What remains to be done is to announce new leadership for the Department of Defense. This, surely, would be an opportunity for a strong, Bush Doctrine-supporting outsider, someone who of course would be a team player, but someone who could also work with the military and broaden support for the president's policy. Is John McCain, or Rudy Giuliani, or Joe Lieberman too much to hope for?
Meanwhile, the offensive in Falluja has gone better than expected, and we are following up in Mosul, Ramadi, and elsewhere as necessary. The president is clearly resolved to mobilize all available military, political, and diplomatic resources to bring off elections in Iraq, and successfully to prosecute the larger war on terror and hasten the transformation of the Middle East.
We know that Bush has been reading Natan Sharansky's fine new book, The Case for Democracy. He's acting as though Alexander Hamilton is on his reading list, too. The "test of a good government," Hamilton argued in The Federalist, "is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration." And, he famously noted, "energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government"; "that unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed"; a "feeble executive" is often made so by division within it; "a feeble executive...is but another phrase for a bad execution"; "and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government."
As chief executive, since his reelection, President Bush has acted with the kind of "decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch" that Hamilton called for. Obviously a huge amount remains to be done. Obviously mistakes will be made. Obviously reality will provide its nasty comeuppances. Intellectually, it's always safer to be a pessimist than an optimist. But Bush's conduct in office since his reelection allows us, at least for now, to be unusually cheerful pessimists.
--William Kristol
© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.
Wild Bill's been all "Say No to Kerry!!!" throughout the election campaigns, notably side-stepping a rousing embrace of the Bush record. Only after the better of the two incompetents successfully cons the public into rewarding his sub-par history and the main threat to our world's future has been avoided does he launch into the demands for improvement in the government we're left holding.
Good stuff. Praise for the pigeonholing of Condi, who was a terrible NSA, as well as prodding for both a concrete assignment for Goss and a replacement for the detrimental efforts of a contentious Rumsfeld.
|