Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Demonstrating for Death

(Reprinted from the issue of May 6, 2004)

On Sunday, April 25, perhaps as many as a million people gathered on the Washington Mall. It was billed as a demonstration for “choice,” but it was also an anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-Kerry event.

One banner reportedly said, “Barbara Bush should have exercised choice.” Nice, eh? The obvious, and ugly, meaning is that President Bush should have been aborted. But it’s also a confession that “choice” means abortion. A woman who carries her child to term isn’t “exercising choice.”

A more suitable banner for these peace-loving folk might have read: “Kill babies, not Arabs.”
 
Was Bush Negligent?

President Bush’s critics argue that he was insufficiently vigilant before the 9/11 attacks and that he might have prevented them if he’d heeded intelligence warnings. Maybe so, but there is an obvious answer, and it’s surprising that none of his conservative defenders have made it.

With the enormous growth of the federal government over the past century, every president has been swamped with tasks. The few functions assigned to the government by the U.S. Constitution — such as “the common defense of the United States” — are now diluted, and inevitably demoted, among the thousands of unconstitutional functions that have been superadded to them.

On September 11, 2003, Bush was supposed to be “managing the economy,” administering countless programs, supervising the welfare state, enforcing thousands of federal regulations, protecting the environment, fighting racial discrimination, promoting public health, and so forth and so on. Of course Bush accepted all these as part of the job, but his liberal critics also demanded it. No Democrat was demanding that he give top priority to looking out for terrorist attacks.

At the time, guarding against terrorism was only one among the stupendous hodgepodge of presidential duties under the rules both parties took for granted. On that fatal day it suddenly vaulted to the top of the list, and Bush is being judged harshly in hindsight. This charge is grossly unfair, especially coming from those who have done so much to overload the role of government in our lives.

If Bush had been concentrating on defense as his essential and chief concern under the Constitution, he might conceivably have prevented the 9/11 horrors. But that’s purely hypothetical. If he’d done that, he’d have gotten no credit for it, and the Democrats would have complained that his obsession with terrorism was causing him to neglect his duties to the orphan and the widow.

The more inessential functions the state assumes, it has been said, the worse it will perform its essential ones. But neither of our major parties can define “essential” functions of government; both accept the sloppy notion that its purposes are boundless, that it has no limits, that it may and must keep multiplying its responsibilities and therefore its powers.

In a word, this is insane. Imagine the look on James Madison’s face in 1787 if someone had suggested to him that the new Constitution should empower the “general” government, as it was sometimes called, to save the whale or discourage teenage smoking.

That government has now expanded to the point where it creates or aggravates most of the problems it is expected to solve. Bush is open to criticism on many grounds; as I wrote recently, he seems to have no sense of measure. It’s only fair to add that hardly anyone else does either.

That’s why all our political arguments are so inconclusive and pointless: There are no longer rational criteria for settling them. So we are left with confusion and shouting matches.
 
Kerry’s Secret Weapon

“A lot of people don’t really know who I am,” John Kerry said recently. The trouble is that it doesn’t seem to help when they do. The Washington Post has just done a long profile on the lighter, warmer side of Kerry, only to conclude, in effect, that it doesn’t exist. The dark side of this moon is just as cold and rocky as the familiar side. Even when he pokes fun at himself, the jokes fall flat. Maybe he should try abortion gags. The guy has all the charisma of Mike Dukakis in a thong swimsuit.

Twenty years ago, the press was full of loose allegations that Walter Mondale was actually a live wire, once you got to know him. But “Psst — that Fritz is a real card, I’m telling you” didn’t quite carry him to the White House. And after all, he was running against a matchless raconteur.

Still, Kerry campaigns doggedly, in the belief that he can galvanize audiences by shouting about the economy. It isn’t working. This is a man who can achieve monotony in a single sound bite. And if these are his highlights, what must the rest be like? It’s fine to campaign doggedly, but when the crowd has to listen doggedly, you’re in trouble.

Quick: What’s Kerry’s message? I don’t know either. First it was that he wasn’t Howard Dean, which proved he was “electable,” and now I guess it’s that he isn’t George W. Bush, which doesn’t seem to be enhancing his electability much. He’s also trying to assure us that he isn’t just another Massachusetts liberal, but it’s a little late for that. You can’t very well deny what you’ve spent your whole career proving to the hilt.

We’ve already reached that point in the campaign when the press discloses the candidate’s “secret weapon”: inevitably, his wife. Teresa Heinz Fortune Kerry is appearing on magazine covers, and she brings to her husband’s race for the White House something it desperately needs: a personality. (And money, of course.)

Unfortunately, Kerry seems to want to keep this secret weapon secret. She’s fresh, outspoken, funny, spontaneous, and surprising. But there’s the rub. Devout feminist though he is, Kerry has to worry about what Mrs. Kerry may say in public.

Newsweek quotes her: “I don’t view abortion as just a nothing. It is stopping the process of life.” She believes that “women, generally speaking, do not want to have abortions. With the exception of people who are mindless — and there will always be mindless people of both sexes — most women wouldn’t want to.”

Not exactly the sort of stuff we were hearing on the Mall the other day. And the last thing a Democratic presidential hopeful needs is his own wife talking like some sort of Catholic.

No wonder she makes the Kerry campaign nervous. They’re afraid she might turn out to be George Bush’s secret weapon.
 
“Nothing Wrong with That”

The liberal Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has narrowly survived a primary challenge from Pat Toomey, a conservative Republican congressman. The aptly named Specter enjoyed the endorsement of our allegedly conservative president, who, sounding a bit embarrassed, allowed that the pro-abortion senator is “a little independent sometimes — nothing wrong with that.”

We can’t let little differences over killing the unborn get in the way of party loyalty, can we? After all, the Senate majority is at stake, and Specter is deemed more “electable” — sound familiar? — than Toomey.


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Joseph Sobran