Trying to win back Hawkish Democrats



I was over at Roger Simon's blog and posted a comment I thought I should share with you.

If you lean Democratic on domestic issues but approve of Bush's actions in the WOT ("War On Terrorism"), how do you vote this year? I was trying to provide a framework to answer that question. I wrote:

The anti-Kerry rhetoric here is getting a little superheated. The Republic will not slide into the ocean if Kerry is elected. The WOT will not be inevitably lost if Kerry is elected.

The question of this election is this: is the net benefit of re-electing Bush on the WOT larger or smaller than the net benefit of electing Kerry on domestic issues?

The gap between Bush and Kerry on the WOT is not as wide as some would like to argue. In some ways Kerry can prosecute the WOT better than Bush could. I'm thinking of a good cop, bad cop strategy here. And Kerry will go after the Saudis more than Bush has -- as Al Haig once said, "go to the source" - and the source is in Saudi Arabia.

The 9/11 attacks were planned by an Al Qaeda cell operating in Hamburg, Germany. Even if we had taken out Saddam in 1991, the 9/11 attacks would still have happened. Kerry's point about the need to focus on better intelligence and police work has some merit. You may disagree with Kerry's stance, but it's not an irrational, blame-America-first, more-liberal-than-Bill-Clinton type of position.

The domestic side of the equation is clearly in Kerry's favor. Racking up huge amounts of government debt before the Baby Boomers retire is utterly irresponsible -- the federal government is likely to have to borrow heavily to finance the upcoming demographic transition, and if our borrowing capacity has been used up by the Bush tax cuts, we're looking at a real fiscal crisis 10 to 15 years from now.

Economic success is the ultimate source of US power and prestige in the world. An economically crippled superpower will have a hard time affording the next Iraq war if and when it becomes necessary.

Plus we're looking at the likely retirement of 3 Supreme Court justices in the next four years. 3 more Scalia's and Thomas's, anyone?

So the idea that the WOT automatically trumps any advantage Kerry has on domestic issues is a little short-sighted, IMHO. It's the trade-off between the two that counts.

And that trade off is a much closer call than many of the people here realize.

Posted: Wed - March 10, 2004 at 09:22 PM        

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