by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, October 1, 2004 2:36 P.M. EDT

Bush and 'But'-Head
John Kerry made some strong and sensible statements during the debate last night, but did you notice what the next word usually was? Here are some Kerry quotes:

• "I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But . . ."
  
  
• "I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are. But . . ."
  
  
• "We have to be steadfast and resolved, and I am. And I will succeed for those troops, now that we're there. We have to succeed. We can't leave a failed Iraq. But . . ."
  
  
• "I believe that we have to win this. The president and I have always agreed on that. And from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority, because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat, and I did accept that intelligence. But . . ."
  
  
• "I have nothing but respect for the British, Tony Blair, and for what they've been willing to do. But . . ."
  
  
• "What I want to do is change the dynamics on the ground. And you have to do that by beginning to not back off of the Fallujahs and other places, and send the wrong message to the terrorists. You have to close the borders. You've got to show you're serious in that regard. But . . ."
  
  
• "I couldn't agree more that the Iraqis want to be free and that they could be free. But . . ."
  
  
• "No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But . . ."
  
  
• "I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force. But . . ."

Maybe Kerry misunderstood when someone told him he needed to have the "qualifications" to be president. But it'd inspire a lot more confidence if he had followed any of these remarks with a "therefore" clause instead of a "but" one.

Victor Davis Hanson makes a related point:

There is a logic to Senator Kerry's flip-flopping that transcends his political opportunism: He is simply a captive of the pulse of the battlefield, without any steady vision or historical sense that might put the carnage of the day into some larger tactical, strategic, or political framework. As was true over a decade ago during Gulf War I, he contradicts himself when good news from the front makes his prior antiwar stance look either timid or foolhardy. But when the casualty rate rises or CNN is particularly vivid in airing the latest beheading or car bomb he returns to his shrill pessimism and denounces the war.

This may be good politics; as Hanson notes, "in this regard, the senator is one with the majority of citizens--at least if the mercurial polls are any indication." But leadership it ain't.

Kerry Wins? Maybe Not.
The conventional wisdom is that John Kerry "won" the debate. We certainly agree that he performed well. In contrast with his hapless recent efforts at the convention and on the stump, he came across as poised, confident and even reasonably disciplined verbally. And he toned down the defeatism on Iraq.

But in a postdebate Gallup poll, although a majority (53%) thought Kerry "did a better job in the debate" than Bush (37%), the results of more specific questions look better for the president:

It may turn out that Kerry impressed voters with his skills as a debater--looking "almost senatorial," as ScrappleFace.com puts it--but fell short of persuading them that he'd be a better president than the incumbent.

A Clever Retort and a Gaffe, All in One
Kerry's best moment came when President Bush attacked one of his biggest weaknesses:

Bush: [He says] help is on the way, but it's certainly hard to tell it when he voted against the $87 billion supplemental to provide equipment for our troops, and then said he actually did vote for it before he voted against it. Not what a commander in chief does when you're trying to lead troops.

Kerry: Well, you know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?

Very clever indeed. Kerry recast the criticism as being about his rhetorical shortcomings, thereby diverting attention from the substantive question, namely his vote against funding the troops.

Immediately afterward, however, Kerry contradicted himself when answering a question from moderator Jim Lehrer:

Lehrer: You spoke to Congress in 1971, after you came back from Vietnam, and you said, quote, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" Are Americans now dying in Iraq for a mistake?

Kerry: No, and they don't have to, providing we have the leadership that we put--that I'm offering.

So Kerry said invading Iraq was a mistake before he said it wasn't.

The 'Global Test'
A very bad moment for Kerry came when Lehrer asked him, "What is your position on the whole concept of pre-emptive war?":

Kerry: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for pre-emptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons. . . .

Bush: Let me--I'm not exactly sure what you mean, "passes the global test," you take pre-emptive action if you pass a global test.

My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people, that you act in order to make this country secure.

It cannot be said that Kerry fails to offer a clear alternative to the president. When it comes to dealing with "the world," meaning the United Nations, Kerry would rather be popular than right.

What Bush didn't say is that the U.N.--meaning the organization as it actually is, not the lofty ideals on which it was founded--is worse than ineffective; it is depraved. It is a convocation of dictatorships and appeasers whose main purpose is to cheerlead for terrorism against Israel. This is not a message a president can deliver, because he has to deal diplomatically with other countries, but that makes it no less true.

Sounds Like a Bad First Date
"Europe Flattered, Unnerved by Kerry Overtures"--headline, Reuters, Oct. 1

Remember the Alamo
Here's Kerry, quoting Richard Clarke:

The terrorism czar, who has worked for every president since Ronald Reagan, said, "Invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor."

Does this mean Kerry would have voted to authorize the invasion of Mexico had he been in the Senate back then? A blogger called Steve makes a related point:

What exactly did Nazi Germany have to do with Pearl Harbor?

Absofreakinglutely nothing.

If you go and read FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech, there is not one single reference to Nazi Germany or a role for America in the war in Europe. Not one. . . .

Yet, within months, FDR decided to pursue a "Europe First" strategy which involved our putting the core of the United States Army into North Africa and then into Europe, on the other side of the planet from the perpetrators of the Pearl Harbor attack in Japan.

Why did he do this? Partly in response to the belief that Nazi Germany was developing a nuclear weapon.

Can you imagine what would have happened to Tom Dewey if he had tried to rip into FDR in the campaign of 1944 on this issue? He would have been crucified, and rightly so.

The Associated Press reports on a new audiotape, ostensibly from Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri (ellipses in original):

In addition to the United States and Britain, the speaker singled out Australia, France, Poland, Norway, South Korea and Japan, saying their ''interests . . . are spread everywhere.''

''We must not wait more . . . or we will be devoured one country after the other,'' the speaker said. ''The youth must not wait for anyone and must begin resisting from now, and take experience and lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and Chechnya.''

Zawahiri certainly seems to think Iraq is central to the war on terror.

And Don't Call Him a 'Freedom Mime'
Blogger James Dwight notes this rather amusing passage in a New York Times account of the debate:

Mr. Kerry moved his hands almost continuously, at one point folding them over his heart like a French mime as he explained that he felt "nothing but respect" for Tony Blair and British soldiers serving in Iraq.

Back in March, Ben Fritz and Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity.org blasted us for describing Kerry as "French-looking." (In August, though, Fritz executed a Kerryesque flip-flop, telling New York magazine that we are "very respected" for the "Kerry-looking-French thing.") Now that the New York Times is likening Kerry not just to a Frenchman but to a French mime, can we all agree that the man is French-looking?

In case we can't, here's one more bit of evidence from Reuters:

Nearly nine out of ten French people would back John Kerry if they could vote in the U.S. election, according to an opinion poll on Friday which showed deep distrust of President Bush since the Iraq war.

The poll, published after Kerry and Bush battled over Iraq in a television debate, came as no surprise in the country which led opposition to the U.S.-led war and whose people were dubbed "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" by American Republicans.

Note the typically sloppy reporting. Reuters can't tell the difference between American Republicans and Scottish groundskeepers.

Notes From the Underground
The New York Post notes a Kerry goof: In complaining about President Bush's homeland security record, the challenger declared that "they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there."

In fact, as the Post notes, this was not true: Not only did the subway system continue to run, but the Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue lines stopped as usual at Penn Station, which serves Madison Square Garden. (Some entrances and exits were closed, however.)

By contrast, in Boston some subway stations were closed during the Democratic Convention, including the one that serves the Fleet Center.

This Just In
"Undecideds Are Still Undecided"--headline, the Forum (Fargo, N.D.), Oct. 1

The Price of 'Freedom': $35,000
"George Mason University canceled a scheduled speaking engagement by liberal filmmaker Michael Moore yesterday after two conservative state legislators and others complained that public money should not support an overtly political event," the Washington Post reports:

Moore, the outspoken director of the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," was to have received about $35,000 for his Oct. 28 speech at the Patriot Center on the Fairfax campus--an event that university officials had arranged a week ago and had not begun to publicize. . . .

The cancellation drew criticism from some Virginia Democrats.

"What are the Republicans afraid of?" asked [state] Sen. Janet D. Howell (Fairfax County). "Would they try to silence Rush Limbaugh? The whole purpose of a university is to have an open debate, with all perspectives being aired and discussed."

How can anyone claim that refusing to pay $35,000 to a fat-cat filmmaker is a violation of "free" speech?

The Bible as 'Hate Speech'
The News of Delaware County (Pa.) carries this report, dateline Upper Darby:

An evangelical preacher whose reading of a Bible passage at the July 21 Lansdowne Borough Council meeting was termed "hate speech" by the council president will stand trial in Media [a town in Pennsylvania] for disrupting a public meeting and a related charge.

Although it doesn't appear as though the preacher is being prosecuted for reading the Bible per se, for a government official to label this "hate speech" suggests that that campaign flier warning about a Bible ban is less fanciful than it sounds.

'He Offered No Clue'
From London's Guardian:

He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws.

But it turns out that there is another side to Justice Antonin Scalia: he thinks Americans ought to be having more orgies.

Challenged about his views on sexual morality, Justice Scalia surprised his audience at Harvard University, telling them: "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged." . . .

He offered no clue to the logic behind his claim that orgies eliminate social tensions.

We're going to go out on a limb and speculate that he might have been joking.

Have They Looked in Syria?
The Washington Post has a fascinating piece on "the East Coast Bigfoot hunters, a group whose members say they are a put-upon subculture in the already marginalized world of sasquatch researchers":

On the one hand, East Coast Bigfooters say they have to fight discrimination from western colleagues who think the creature doesn't live east of the Rocky Mountains. On the other, they have to deal with sighting reports from a more urban population, which includes some who are unfamiliar with wildlife and apt to mistake a black bear for the missing link. . . .

On the West Coast, many believe Bigfoot to be a flesh-and-blood animal, not a ghost or an alien. But he did offer this compromise: Couldn't there be ghosts of dead Bigfoots roaming around as well?

This kind of talk reinforces the view of researchers in the West that the East is an amateur scene, said Matt Moneymaker of California, who heads the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

"They're kind of at the stage where Bigfoot research . . . had been stuck in, like, the mid-'80s," he said.

One problem the East Coast Bigfooters have is time: "They need hours to spend in the woods looking for evidence. But most everybody has a day job. [William] Dranginis designs surveillance equipment, [Bob] Chance sells Christmas trees, and [Travis] McHenry is an intelligence analyst for the Navy."

Maybe that explains the bad intelligence on Iraq.

What Would We Do Without Courts?
"Court: Don't Drive Drunk on Frozen Lakes"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 30

What Would Nauru Do Without Experts?
"Nauru Needs Administrator: Expert"--headline, the Australian, Oct. 1

Most Doctors Would Attack It
"Psychiatrists Defend Illness"--headline, Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, N.J.), Oct. 1

Why Ranophiles Run for Nevada
"In Utah, Stay Away From Bullfrogs or Risk Jail Time"--headline, the Spectrum (St. George, Utah), Oct. 1

Homer Swings and Misses
The Tampa Bay baseball team is not called the Devilry, as we said in an item yesterday. Apparently the actual name is the Tampa Bay Devil Raise--which is fitting, considering how many of you wrote us to raise hell about our mistake.

Postpartum Malaise
Jimmy Carter turns 80 today, and Katie Couric of NBC's "Today" show interviewed him on the occasion. "Couric begins by asking former President Carter if he has plans to slow down, now that he's approaching his 80th birthday," says the show's Web site, which then goes into the transcript:

Carter: When I reach retirement age I certainly intend to do that, but I haven't decided what year that's going to be. As a matter of fact, I'm only 80 and I think I still have a few productive years left in me.

Couric: When I take a look at the activities you've been engaged in in the last 25 years or so, the word that comes to mind is peripatetic. And I looked it up in Webster's Dictionary and one of the definitions is "journey hither and thither"--

Carter: That's right.

Couric: --words you don't hear very often.

Carter: Or "ubiquitous," which means everywhere.

Couric: Yeah, exactly.

Carter: It seems that way.

It sure does. The New York Post quotes Helen Thomas, American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic, who in turn quotes Carter's late mother, Lillian: "When I look at my children, sometimes I wish I remained a virgin."

Believe us, Lil, we feel your pain!

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Five elected black Republicans make the case for Bush.
• Daniel Henninger: Who do you trust to face down the next nuclear threat?
• The Journal Editorial Report: Join us this weekend for a discussion of last night's presidential debate.

And on the Taste page:

• Review & Outlook: All of a sudden civilian astronauts seem like a real possibility.
• Tony & Tacky: No milk? How about some tequila?
• Matthew Kaminski: Baseball returns to Washington and suddenly the city seems to be on the rise.
• Geoffrey Norman: Don't look for sports to get the glitz and glamour treatment in this magazine.
• Dave Shiflett: A Baptist-bashing Crawford, Texas, newspaper endorses Kerry.