Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Final Days

(Reprinted from the issue of November 4, 2004)

My postmortem of the presidential election is somewhat handicapped, and probably somewhat biased, by the fact that I am writing in late October. I can only hope that by the time you read this, President Bush will have been re-elected. Both candidates will be bad for the country, but as I’ve written, Kerry would be far worse for the Catholic Church.

In the presidential debates, he repeated the canard that for him to oppose legal abortion would be to “legislate” an “article of my faith” on non-Catholics. The more I reflect on this, the more vacuous it appears. After all, he was debating a non-Catholic a few feet away who evidently considers abortion evil and is widely suspected (never mind how justly) of wanting to ban it again.

Naturally, the anti-Catholic mainstream media let this pass. Maybe they assumed that a brainy former altar boy like Kerry knew the teachings of his Church and wouldn’t distort them; or maybe they didn’t mind if he did. But Catholic Republicans also failed to pounce on him.

On the other hand, Republicans pummeled Kerry for his most sensible remark on the War on Terrorism. He told The New York Times that terrorism, like most evils, can never be wholly eliminated, only reduced to the level of a “nuisance,” as it was before the 9/11 attacks.

The cry went up that Kerry was belittling the evil of terrorism, which he obviously wasn’t. He was saying pretty much what Bush was saying immediately after 9/11: that we may never know when the war has been won. If and when al-Qaeda is largely crippled and its hostile activities ebb, there will be no formal surrender, and we’ll have to infer a U.S. victory from a long cessation of significant attacks on American targets. Nobody accuses Bush of defeatism for having said this; and he even said it again in a recent interview, causing a brief flurry until he “clarified” his meaning.

Still, Kerry hasn’t really clarified his own position on the war. He says he has a better plan for victory than Bush has — Kerry has a plan for everything — but he also wants to solicit antiwar support among the Democrats. How on earth can he hope to win what he calls “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time”? If Bush has gotten the United States into an unwinnable war, as appears more certain every day, then Kerry’s victory plan must be as fraudulent as the president’s.

It would be more sensible for Kerry to say plainly that the war on Iraq was wrong and misconceived in the first place and that, in any case, Bush has made victory over terrorism unachievable. No “plan” can save it at this point. If that was ever possible, it isn’t now, and Kerry shouldn’t have accepted the burden of promising it. But he felt he had to outbid Bush’s optimism, pessimism (even if it’s mere realism) being un-American and unpatriotic.

Kerry has already insulted the U.S.’s active allies in the war — “the coalition of the bribed, the bought, and the bullied” — while saying he’d invite traditional U.S. allies to help. But those allies have said flatly that they have no intention of sending troops to Iraq. Under President Kerry, the U.S. would still be fighting alone, continuing to antagonize most of the world.

Ironically, Kerry offers to replay the history of the Vietnam War he famously protested against. If Bush is the Lyndon Johnson of the Republican Party, Kerry may become the Democrats’ Richard Nixon.
 
Control of the Judiciary

How would a Kerry presidency differ from Bush’s? The question has been sharpened by the announcement that Chief Justice William Rehnquist has been treated for thyroid cancer. Everyone assumes that Kerry’s court appointees would be much more liberal than Bush’s. No doubt, but this only makes this year’s U.S. Senate elections nearly as critical as the presidential race.

Beginning in the 1980s, the Democrats saw how vital control of the federal judiciary is. They fought extremely bitter battles to block the confirmation of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

By contrast, the Republicans made no attempt to block Bill Clinton’s two very liberal nominees, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Orrin Hatch, Utah’s “pro-life” Republican, babbled his unctuous gratitude for the opportunity to vote for Judge Ginsburg’s elevation to the court. Try to imagine a Democrat prostrating himself before a Republican nominee!

Surely the Republicans will have to put up more resistance than that if Kerry assumes the presidency. Still, whoever occupies the White House, the Senate is likely to remain closely split; and even if the GOP retains or slightly increases its edge, there are enough pro-abortion Republicans to make the difference.
 
“Global Leadership”

Kerry’s notorious flip-flops are as nothing compared with the confusion created by Bush’s imperialistic big-government conservatism. Even principled conservatives this year have been unable to agree on which candidate is the lesser evil; a few have been driven to Ralph Nader or other minor-party candidates who, however principled, have no chance of winning. The 2004 race has been not just a dilemma, but a maddening conundrum.

It has been less maddening for liberals, who, however disappointed by Kerry, have been united by their loathing for Bush. Even most of those who voted for Nader last time regarded him as an irresponsible spoiler this year. Yet the polls in the last days of the race are so tight that it wouldn’t be amazing if Nader turned out to be the deciding factor again! Alas, this is one of the many things I can’t know at this writing.

Win or lose, Bush can thank himself for making this a close race. At the beginning of the year the Democrats nearly despaired of finding a candidate who could surmount his popularity. They rejected Howard Dean and settled on the lackluster liberal Kerry as “electable.” Then came lots of bad news for Bush: The occupation became frustrating, evidence mounted that the war on Iraq had been waged on false pretexts, Bush’s neoconservative counselors were discredited, the Abu Ghraib scandals erupted, and the popularity of the U.S. reached new lows all over the world.

It became preposterous to speak of America’s “global leadership.” The era of American moral prestige has gone the way of cheap oil.

Still, Kerry remained uninspiring, and Bush had begun to regain his wide lead, only to waste it in the debates. I didn’t expect the outcome of this election to remain in doubt less than a week before November 2. You might think a photo finish would at least be thrilling. But this one is only nerve-wracking.


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Joseph Sobran