perfidy

In response to this statement from Gephardt:

"George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago."

William Kristol had some things to say.

Are we not even a little safer now that the Taliban and Hussein are gone, many al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, governments such as Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's are at least partly hampering al Qaeda's efforts instead of blithely colluding with them, the opposition in Iran is stronger, our defense and intelligence budgets are up and, for that matter, Milosevic is gone and the Balkans are at peace (to mention something for which the Clinton administration deserves credit but that had not happened by July 1999)?

Is it reasonable to criticize aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy? Sure. The initial failures in planning for postwar Iraq, the incoherence of its North Korea policy, the failure adequately to increase defense spending or reform our intelligence agencies . . . on all of these, and other issues as well, the administration could use constructive, even sharp, criticism. But that we were safer and more secure four years ago?
Gephardt has made a claim that will come back to haunt him and his fellow Democrats...

There are plenty of legitimate grounds to criticize the Bush administration's foreign policy. But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know no such thing.

This is some amazingly ridiculous thinking, from someone I've come to consider almost synonymous with ridiculous thinking. I think Kristol hits it here. If by some freak of nature Gephardt got the nomination, this would come back to haunt them.

But how many democratic candidates either believe or will say this in the future? If this is any measure of the Democratic leadership's mindset, they are in for a rude shock when they realize how far to the margins they've been pushed. And Gephardt is a centrist democrat!

It is not good for the Republic for one of its two major parties to go traipsing off into lala land. When you add in the conspiracy theories, virulant Bush hatred, and all the rest - you worry. Why can't we have a sane Democratic party, like we had back before '68?