Peggy Noonan has some interesting thing to say about Dean in her recent column.
I want to like Howard Dean. I don't mean I want to support him; I mean I want to like him, or find him admirable even if I don't agree with him. I want the Democratic Party to have a strong nominee this year, for several reasons. One is that it is one of our two great parties, and it is dispiriting to think it is not able to summon up a deeply impressive contender. Another is that democracy is best served by excellent presidential nominees duking it out region to region in a hard-fought campaign that seriously raises the pressing issues of the day. A third is that the Republican Party is never at its best when faced with a lame challenger. When faced with a tough and scrappy competitor like Bill Clinton, they came up with the Contract with America. When faced with Michael Dukakis they came up with flag-burning amendments. They need to be in a serious fight before they fight seriously.
I’ve been feeling the same way for many of the same reasons. Republicans are getting lazy and using their majorities to buy votes with more government spending and illegal alien amnesty. They need a good fight to remember what they believe in.
I’d also like to like Dean to show Democrats that the overwhelming opposition to Clinton wasn’t merely politics, but one of integrity. Democrats have tried to make the military issue about whether or not someone actually served. John Kerry loves to use his service and ridicule Bush for being in the National Guard. Members of the National Guard died in Vietnam too, but you’d never know such a thing from hearing the issue discussed.
It wasn’t that Clinton didn’t serve that made conservatives dislike him, but that he was called into service by his country and refused to go. He wouldn’t even join the safer National Guard, because he “loathed the military.” It was his right to loathe whatever he wanted, but if the leader of the military doesn’t respect the institution how can he lead it. We know now that Clinton’s life pattern has been nothing but the quest for power at any cost. Gore, who is much more honorable than that, was tainted by his association with Clinton in the 2000 election.
I had hoped that 2004 would bring a serious Democrat into the fold who would debate the liberal point of view and make Bush debate the conservative one. A candidate like Mario Cuomo would be good for the country. For all of his rough spots, at least Dean has the opportunity to accomplish the liberal argument.
It’s time that we have a debate in this county between someone who is uneasy about American power overseas and one that relishes it. Candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards just dodge issue by voting in favor, but doing nothing to support it. Had either of them been President, we would have ended the war after attacking Afghanistan.
Bush is no doubt the best person to lead this war, and his tax cuts were bold and needed. But there would have been economic advantages to having Gore with a Republican congress. Of course, we would have had to endure 4 years of him talking down to us as if we were children, but you can bet that his spending bills would have been dead on arrival. A war still would have created deficits, but the Republican congress wouldn’t have authorized half the money that they were willing to give Bush.
For all the credit that Clinton loves to take from the 1990s, he was mostly a neutered President that had to settle for Republican led spending measures that kept the deficit low. Wall Street took it as a positive that tax rates wouldn’t climb and the market responded well.
Bush would be much better off if he had to play to conservatives instead of pander to liberals. His quest to outspend them isn’t going to win them many votes, but it will create a large government that will someday be tempted to raise my taxes to the point where I won’t have time to blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment