Arnold Kling has this excellent analysis of President Bush’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
And Professor Maule has some insightful comments on the President’s proposals regarding income tax simplification.
Sigh.
Al Hunt is executive Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal ($). His WSJ responsibilities include writing the weekly editorial page column, “Politics and People,” and directing the paper’s political polls.
This week, Mr. Hunt is writing his column from the Republican Party Convention in New York, but his subject in today’s column is the coming shakeup in the John Kerry’s campaign staff resulting from President Bush’s recent run-up in the polls. Mr. Hunt describes what Mr. Kerry’s supporters are saying about his management style:
The Kerry campaign, like most, ultimately reflects the candidate. The cautious indecisiveness and occasional vacillations have become Kerry trademarks.
Leading Democrats describe a command structure often frozen — or at least tempered — by too many chefs, a too-heavy reliance on polls or focus groups and an aversion to risks. As a result, the message often is muddled and the reaction to hard-hitting attacks from Republicans often is slow and unconvincing.
With friends like these . . .
This interesting Victor Davis Hanson column on John Kerry’s military service is respectful and insightful, and Professor Hanson’s conclusion is absolutely brilliant:
So I conclude with empathy for John Kerry, whom I appreciate as a veteran who served his country ? even if I would not now vote for him. He should have been aware of the god Nemesis. Still, in a spirit of magnanimity and appreciation for his months on a boat in a very inhospitable landscape, Americans perhaps should remember the words of Pericles, as recorded by Thucydides shortly after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: “For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual.”
This Austin American-Statesman (free online subscription required) article provides a profile on Bob Perry, the Houston-based homebuilder who has become the largest contributor to Texas Republican political candidates.
On one hand, Mr. Perry is reported to be an unassuming contributor:
At the state level, several office-holders said Perry never asks anything of them.
Patterson was the state senator for Perry’s district before becoming land commissioner.
“In 20 years, he’s never asked me for anything,” Patterson said. “When I was in the Senate, there were issues he was interested in, but he never called up and said, ‘Can you help me on this?’ ”
Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs agrees.
“He doesn’t lobby me,” she said. “I lobby him. I know he has contacts.”
She said she asked his advice on how to encourage home construction in rural areas. He also organized a meeting of Houston ministers in minority communities when she wanted to talk about schoolchildren’s diets.
When Bob Deuell was running against a Democratic incumbent for a Dallas-area Senate seat, he got help from Perry before ever meeting him.
“I just started getting these checks from him,” Deuell recalls. When Deuell phoned to thank Perry and ask for a meeting, Perry said there was no need. “I know who you are,” Deuell remembers Perry telling him.
By Election Day, the checks totaled more than $250,000.
On the other hand, Mr. Perry has received some valuable business consideration for his hefty political contributions:
Perry got plenty for the $3.8 million he spent on the 2002 elections.
In 2003, a Republican-controlled Legislature curbed the ability of consumers to file lawsuits against businesses.
Krugh, the lawyer for Perry Homes, also helped write legislation that created the Texas Residential Construction Commission, a new state agency to create rules for dispute resolution between home builders and consumers. The governor then appointed Krugh to the nine-member commission.
Opponents see the new agency as a hurdle to consumers suing home builders; the builders defend it as a quicker, fairer way to resolve disputes.
“Bob Perry was highly rewarded with his own state agency,” said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston. “In Texas you can buy your own state agency, then regulate yourself.”
Doesn’t Governor Perry and the Texas Republican Party stand for less governmental regulation? Or is it that they stand for less governmental regulation except in those cases where more regulation will benefit their largest contributor?
As noted in this earlier post, Equatorial Guinea is one fascinating place. Now, this NY Times article reports on the latest bizarre development in the affairs of this little African oil enclave. Here are all earlier posts on Equatorial Guinea.
With true stories like these, who needs novels?
In case you have tuning out the world over the past month or so, you already know that prominent Houston attorney John O’Neill is the author of the best-selling book “Unfit for Command” and has been at the forefront of the group known as the Swift Boat Veterans that has been waging a public campaign against John Kerry’s candidacy for President. In this Wall Street Journal ($) op-ed today in which he defends the SWV’s right to campaign against Mr. Kerry. First Mr. O’Neill debunks the notion that the SBV’s are a mouthpiece for the Bush-Cheney campaign:
Are we controlled by the Bush-Cheney campaign? Absolutely not. The Swift boat veterans who joined our group come in all political flavors: independents, Republicans, Democrats, and other more subtle variations. Had another person been the presidential candidate of the Democrats, our group never would have formed. Had Mr. Kerry been the Republican candidate, each of us would still be here.
We do not take direction from the White House or the president’s re-election committee, and our efforts would continue even if President Bush were to ask us directly to stop.
Then, Mr. O’Neill explains simply why the SBV’s have come forward:
Why have we come forward? As explained in “Unfit For Command,” Mr. Kerry grossly exaggerated and lied about his abbreviated four-month tour in Vietnam. He disgraced all legitimate Vietnam War heroes when he falsely testified to Congress that we were war criminals, daily engaged in atrocities that had the full approval of all levels in the chain of command. So, once Mr. Kerry decided to apply for the commander in chief’s job with a war-hero resumÈ, we felt compelled to come forward to explain why he is “unfit for command.”
Read the whole piece.
And, in this related WSJ op-ed, the WSJ’s Daniel Henninger shakes his head at the way Mr. Kerry is responding to the SBV’s:
How can this be happening? Why didn’t John Kerry months back — if not years — find some gracious way to make peace with the John O’Neills of the world? Why didn’t one wise head among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy once past the party’s primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war’s heroes. This is an election, not a Shakespearean tragedy. How come John Kerry never worked out, before the final leg of his long odyssey, a let-bygones statement, admitting the hyperbole (at the least) of his accusations of atrocity before Congress in 1971, honoring the service of colleagues who never felt obliged to apologize for Vietnam, but reserving his right to oppose that troubled war?
As I noted in this earlier blog post on Mr. O’Neill from several months ago, John is a highly regarded attorney in Houston legal circles and independent politically. The Kerry campaign’s attempts to discredit him as a Republican shill are doomed to failure.
John Kerry has recently admitted that he used poor judgment and engaged in youthful indiscretion in condemning many of his co-Vietnam veterans publicly during the early 1970’s. Was that earlier criticism truly a product of youthful indiscretion? Or is Mr. Kerry’s response to serious critics such as John O’Neill prove that he simply has poor judgment and that he has not really changed from his earlier indiscretion?
By the way, before commenting, please know that I am also independent politically.
Washington Post columnist George Will’s column today is an outstanding analysis of the inane implications of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” legislation. Mr. Will relates the absurd suppression of free speech — the suppression of a dealership’s car ads that use the dealership’s name, which happens to be the same as a Republican candidate for senator — and observes the following:
A core principle of an open society is that, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, liberties “depend on the silence of the law” — what is not forbidden is permitted. However, because of the com- plexities and vagaries of McCain-Feingold and the rest of the government’s metastasizing regulations of political activity, prudent participants in poli- tics must assume that everything is forbidden until the government gives permission.
The Supreme Court’s affirmation of McCain-Feingold was a watershed in the nation’s constitutional experience. The First Amendment will be forever open to statutory dilution, at least as it pertains to political speech. (The court has placed pornography essentially beyond the reach of regulation.) Henceforth, the guarantee of freedom of political speech is being steadily circum- scribed in the name of political hygiene. The right of free expression can be trumped by the supposed imperative of combating “corruption” or “the appearance” thereof, which is to say, where probably no actual corruption exists.
Common Cause’s desire to regulate car ads has no conceivable connection to preventing corruption. But the “corruption” rationale merely disguises the reformers’ real agenda, which is to extend government supervision of speech whenever they think extension serves their partisan advantage.
And in deriding President Bush’s late criticism yesterday of the use of section “527” organization funding for political ads, this Wall Street Journal ($) editorial reminds us that McCain-Feingold is a product of bipartisan misjudgments:
One reason 527s are so prominent now is because Mr. Bush made the mistake of signing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” that barred big donations to political parties. So 527s have become the new alternative vehicle that Americans passionate about politics are using to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. The difference is that now the campaigns can’t control how that money is spent.
If Mr. Bush wanted the two major parties to better control their campaign messages, he could have vetoed McCain-Feingold. Some of us urged him to do so, but his political advisers whispered not to worry, the Supreme Court will take care of it. Well, Sandra Day O’Connor failed too, but in any event since when are Presidents supposed to pass the buck to judges?
In our view, this was among the worst moments of Mr. Bush’s term. Having helped to midwife the current campaign-finance system, it ill behooves him to blame others for the way this world works.
This post from a few days ago addressed the Bush Administration’s rather lackluster record in regard to fiscal policy.
Now, American Enterprise Institute fellows Eric M. Engen and Kevin A. Hassett provide this analysis of John Kerry’s spending promises combed from his public statements, policy memos, and other information provided by his campaign staff. the Kerry spending promises add up to an extraordinary amount of money. Their best estimate is that Kerry’s proposals would increase federal spending $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion over the next ten years. Mr. Hassett comments:
[R]oughly half of this additional spending is attributable to Senator Kerry’s health care proposals that would add more than $900 billion in federal outlays. Education expenditure accounts for nearly one quarter of Kerry’s new spending, with almost $500 billion added over ten years. A $400 billion expansion of military personnel and benefits for veterans comprises most of the remainder of Kerry’s spending plans, with the balance distributed among numerous social programs and increases in international aid.
Hat tip to the Marginal Revolution for the link to this foreboding analysis.
Victor Davis Hanson’s NRO column this week picks up on the phenomenom that Professor Ribstein noted some time ago — the almost pathological hatred of President Bush exhibited by some on the political left. The entire column is well worth reading, but Professor Hanson’s conclusion is particularly insightful and also cautionary:
In short, the Left hates George W. Bush for who he is rather than what he does. Southern conservatism, evangelical Christianity, a black-and-white worldview, and a wealthy man’s disdain for elite culture ? none by itself earns hatred, of course, but each is a force multiplier of the other and so helps explain the evolution of disagreement into pathological venom.
September 11 cooled the furor of these aristocratic critics, but Iraq re-ignited it. Not voting for George Bush is, of course understandable and millions in fact will do precisely that. But for those haters who demonize the man, their knee-jerk disgust tells us far more about their own shallow characters than it does anything about our wartime president.
And there is a great danger in all these manifestations of pure hatred. We are in a war. And in these tumultuous days, the Left’s unhinged odium will resonate with and embolden not only our enemies abroad, but also the deranged, dangerous folk here at home.
This Opinion Journal piece discusses the likely outcome of an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack on the United States, which Department Department officials have been being discussing just below the public surface for the past few years. Not a pretty prospect.