Writing at Democratic Underground, Thomas Lesh makes a case I can pretty much agree with: Carpe Diem. He says the current Democratic leadership is being too timid in attacking Bush’s inept foreign policy, that being an effective opposition to the current train wreck of a ruling regime means articulating a credible alternative on the issues people care about. These days, that means national security. Of course, that would entail taking some risks, rather than trying to drift with the current of public opinion, waiting for the polls to change before popping up at the head of the parade. Which basically disqualifies most of the politicians we currently have at a national level.

In reviewing which of the Democratic presidential contenders lives up to this higher standard, Lesh dismisses from the get-go anyone who voted in favor of the war resolution, meaning he dismisses my current favorite, Kerry, and focuses on Dean and Kucinich as the only viable choices. (I suppose you could throw in Wesley Clark, assuming he stops being coy and enters the race.)

I’ve been leaning toward Kerry mainly for that Clinton-inspired “electability” factor: I’ve been trained to believe that in order to win the presidency a Democrat has to be a politician first and a leader second. But it’s true that Kerry’s war resolution vote is problematic. As the anonymous, droll, permalink-challenged foks at the WSJ’s OpinionJournal put it recently:

For the sake of argument, let’s say Kerry is right and Bush perpetrated a sham. In a hypothetical general-election match-up, who would you rather choose to deal with hostile foreign leaders: a guy who’s capable of pulling off such an elaborate deception, or the sucker who fell for it?

I’m not sure how Kerry solves that problem, at least in terms of satisfying someone like me. But then my cynical side observes that it doesn’t matter if Kerry can satisfy me; it only matters if he can satisfy enough of Middle America to get elected. And I’m very much in the anyone-but-Bush camp.

Still, it would be nice to believe in somebody for a change. Maybe I’ll start paying more attention to Dean.

This entry was posted by jbc on Friday, June 20th, 2003 at 8:21 am and is filed under the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.