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A Plea for Democracy
I wasn't going to write this column unless John Kerry wins next Tuesday. Now I realize it's better to say it all now before we know who wins the election.
I have one plea to conservatives. If the Democrats do manage to squeak through next week, I have one request: Let's let this guy govern. I know it's going to be tempting to scream foul or to start making fun of his daughters or to put under the microscope whether John Kerry really was in Cambodia for Christmas 1968.
But let's at least give him the chance to pull the country together.
American democracy has been taking a beating lately. Looking at the emotions running loose now, you begin to understand why democracy doesn't always work in other countries.
The mistake about democracy is to believe that the only thing that matters is the majority rules. That isn't true. Majority rule is only half the story and probably not the most important part. What is more important is that the losers are willing to accept the verdict.
For the last four years the Democrats have come perilously close to defying this principle. They have never accepted the legitimacy of George Bush's victory in 2000, even though it's written right there in the Constitution. From that point it's been easy to proceed to the premise that we wouldn't be in Iraq and maybe the terrorists wouldn't have even attacked at all if George Bush hadn't been President. The result is the state of unreality the Democrats inhabit today.
If the Democrats lose again this time, I think they're going to go over the cliff. There are elements of the Democratic Party that are so self-righteous that I doubt they'll be able to function as a minority party. They'll go extracurricular, stonewalling court nominations, disrupting Congress, parading in the streets and taking ''direct actions'' to try to accomplish what they can't win in the voting booth.
Unfortunately, the worst thing that could happen is for the Republicans to turn into a mirror of that party. We had a lot of this during the Clinton era. The demonizing of Bill and Hillary Clinton, the snooping around in their sex lives -- I was never very happy with any of that. Granted Bill Clinton was a libertine, but I don't think anybody can withstand too much scrutiny of their personal life.
The fact remains that the country was reasonably well governed during the Clinton era. We balanced the budget, passed welfare reform, and created a good deal of economic prosperity. The things that we didn't do right -- ignoring the terrorist threat, allowing nuclear proliferation -- were part and parcel of the deal and have now been corrected. Altogether, though, divided government isn't that bad. Even if Kerry wins, the Republicans will still control Congress, so it won't be a complete disaster.
There's one more thing that makes a reasonable acceptance of the will of the majority well advised. Kerry is going to lose his electoral base faster than any President in history. At least half his constituency thinks that once he wins we'll be out of Iraq in three months. This isn't going to happen. When all the electoral balloons have floated away, Kerry will face the same dilemma George Bush now faces -- a hostile Middle East, an indifferent Europe, a fragile democracy in Iraq, and a world where rogue nations are acquiring nuclear weapons as fast as possible.
It will become necessary. After six months in office, Kerry will be seeking asylum from the pacifist loonies that surround him. At this point, the Republicans will be in a position to accommodate him. They can then co-govern, exactly as they did with Bill Clinton.
But all this will be possible only if we don't first destroy the Presidency in the process of choosing one. For the sake of the Republic, what Republicans should exercise now is a little intelligent self-restraint.
By A Rather Staunch Republican
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George W. Bush deserves a second
They who build on ideas, wrote Emerson, build for eternity. Whatever the failures of his first term, Bush has sought to build on ideas. Kerry, for his part, has disclaimed those ideas. That's his prerogative. Unfortunately, he has offered no credible alternative for repulsing the threat of Islamist terrorism. On the contrary, Kerry aims to resurrect the discredited ideas of the '90s, ideas that New Yorkers like myself had hoped went up in the smoke of a felled World Trade Center. Ultimately, if there is any virtue in Kerry's foreign policy atavism, it is this: more than any one argument ever could, it makes clear that George W. Bush deserves a second term.
By went up in the smoke of a felled
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JUDGE JOHN KERRY BY HIS RECORD
John Kerry, in short, remains firmly in the throes of Vietnam syndrome, afraid to take the steps needed to protect America from threats to its security ?— and, even worse, tailoring his worldview to his current standing in the polls.
And, by the way, he now campaigns against the Patriot Act, calling it a threat to our civil liberties. Yet he voted in favor of that very same bill, too.
Little wonder, then, that John Kerry has spent almost no time on the campaign trail talking about his record. Because it's the skeleton in his closet ?— an endless litany of left-wing votes and proposals that refutes his headlong rush to the political center as Election Day draws near.
On domestic issues, the record is the same: Kerry's campaign pledges and pronouncements are totally contradicted by his 20-year performance as a legislator from Massachusetts. ''I'm a liberal and proud of it,'' Kerry declared in 1991 ?— and nothing he's done in the Senate suggests otherwise.
He has voted consistently to raise taxes ?— though on other issues, he is consistently inconsistent: opposing the death penalty for terrorists in 1996, then supporting it in 2002; voting for the No Child Left Behind Act, then attacking it as a ''mockery''; opposing work requirements for welfare recipients, then voting for welfare reform; saying he opposes litmus tests for federal judges, then vowing to impose one if he wins this year.
And at a time when soaring liability insurance costs ?— in the wake of sky-high jury verdicts ?— are threatening the U.S. health-care system, Kerry chose as his running-mate a multi-millionaire personal-injury lawyer who stands in the way of any meaningful tort reform.
Himself a multi-millionaire by marriage, Kerry unconvincingly pretends to champion the struggling middle-class even as his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, derides the work experience of Laura Bush ?— a former schoolteacher and librarian and a full-time mother.
''I don't know that she's ever had a real job, I mean, since she's been grown up,'' Heinz Kerry told USA Today ?— a remark for which she quickly apologized.
Ultimately, however, there is one over- riding issue in this campaign: the War on Terror.
That much became clear ?— to everyone, it seems, except John Kerry ?— in the ashes of the World Trade Center.
For most Americans, 9/11 changed the way this nation needs to think about external threats and national security.
But for John Kerry, still stuck emotionally in the Vietnam quagmire, it appears that there were no lessons to be learned.
Which is why America can't afford John Kerry as president.
By campaigns against the Patriot Ac
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back to see if you have a bronze
a Chinese curio shop in San Fran
A friend sent me this and it was so good I wanted to share it with you:
A tourist walked into a Chinese curio shop in San Francisco
While looking aroundat the exotic merchandise, he noticed a very lifelike, life-sized, bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag, but was so incredibly striking. The tourist decided he must have it.
He took it to the old shop owner and asked, ''How much for the bronze rat?''
''Ahhh, you have chosen wisely! It is $12 for the rat, $100 for the story,'' said the wise old Chinaman.
The tourist quickly pulled out twelve dollars.
''I'll just take the rat; you can keep the story.
As he walked down the street carrying his bronze rat, the tourist noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the alleys and sewers and had begun following him down the street. This was a bit disconcerting so he began walking faster. A couple blocks later he looked behind him and saw to his horror the herd of rats behind him had grown to hundreds, and they began squealing. Sweating now, the tourist began to trot toward the Bay.
Again, after a couple blocks, he looked around only to discover that the rats now numbered in the MILLIONS, and were squealing and coming toward him.
Terrified, he ran to the edge of the Bay and threw the bronze rat as far as he could into the Bay. Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped into the Bay after the bronze rat, and were all drowned.
The man walked back to the curio shop in Chinatown.
''Ahhh,'' said the owner, ''you have come back for story?''
''No sir,'' said the man, ''I came back to see if you have a bronze Liberal''
By A tourist walked into a Chinese
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