From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, February 18, 2005 4:00 P.M. EST

Till Tuesday
We won't be doing a column Monday, President's Day. If you need something to fill the void, there could hardly be a better time to read (or reread) "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House," which, in answer to your question, is available from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

How to Win Conservatives: Become More Liberal!
A Boston Globe editorial offers advice to Democrats who "are worried that the party's traditional support for abortion rights may have contributed to their losses in the 2004 elections." The Globe opines that Democrats can reach out to pro-lifers even while continuing to oppose any and all restrictions on abortion by stressing "three areas of truly common concern that can significantly reduce the number of abortions: adoption, contraception, and compassion."

The Globe's specific proposals are as follows:

  • Reverse "outdated laws" that "still forbid adoption by unmarried or single parents and gay couples."

  • Improve "access to reliable birth control," which the Globe suggests would include handing out condoms in high schools, making "morning after" contraception available over the counter, and requiring pharmacists to dispense birth-control pills even if they have conscientious objections to doing so.

  • Provide poor women with "support in raising their children"--meaning more-generous welfare benefits--if they choose not to abort.

Whatever the merits of these positions, we'd venture to say that most abortion opponents are not supporters of gay adoption, high-school condom giveaways or bigger handouts for welfare moms. For that matter, many people support legal abortion and oppose these things.

If the Globe were offering a compromise--we'll get behind some abortion restrictions if you support some liberal measures in other areas--this might make political sense. But what the paper is proposing is that the Democrats be as rigid as ever on abortion while taking aggressively liberal positions on other social issues. This is advice the Democratic Party can't afford not to ignore.

How Would Lynne Stewart Vote?
"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible White House candidate in 2008, joined 2004 nominee John Kerry [the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge] and other Democrats Thursday in urging that Election Day be made a federal holiday to encourage voting," the Associated Press reports from Washington.

Sen. Clinton "also pushed for legislation that would allow all ex-felons to vote."

This seems a rather pointless exercise. Surely the Republican Congress is not going to support legislation aimed at winning more votes for Democrats, which would be the effect of these proposals. Declaring a federal holiday would simply mean federal employees, who tend to lean toward the Dems, would be more likely to go to the polls, and felons are generally thought to be far more Democratic than the general public. ("Ex-felons" is a misnomer; presumably the AP means felons who've served their sentences.)

Supporting voting rights for felons seems a political miscalculation as well. Bill Clinton's ostentatious support for the death penalty in 1992 went a long way to dispel his party's image as soft on crime, but now Mrs. Clinton wants to be the champion of voting rights for criminals?

Which calls to mind yesterday's item on Democratic chairman Howard Dean's objection to a Republican who characterized the Dems as "the party of . . . Lynne Stewart," the lawyer just convicted of abetting terrorism. The New York Sun reports that Stewart is in fact a registered Democrat, and we noted in November 2003 that Stewart was the guest of honor at a Staten Island Democratic Association dinner. Now Hillary wants Stewart to have the right to vote as soon as she's served her sentence. What exactly is Dean upset about again?

Shoe Fly, Shoo
Pentagon adviser Richard Perle debated Howard Dean in Portland, Ore., last night, and the audience included at least one idiot, as the Associated Press reports:

Perle had just started his comments Thursday when a protester threw a shoe at him before being dragged away, screaming, "Liar! Liar!"

Sounds like a Khrushchev wannabe. What is it with advocates of totalitarianism and their shoes? Anyway, then there's this gem:

In his new role as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dean has stressed that Democrats are stronger than Republicans on defense.

"Defense is a lot broader than swaggering around saying you're going to kick Saddam's butt," Dean said Thursday, drawing cheers from the crowd in this city that overwhelmingly voted Democratic last November.

It's not clear how this shows that "Democrats are stronger than Republicans on defense." After all, "swaggering around saying you're going to kick Saddam's butt" was precisely the policy of the last Democratic administration. The current Republican administration actually kicked his butt and even took down names. That strikes us as a pretty broad policy.

Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, meanwhile, criticizes President Bush for not being aggressive enough in his democracy agenda:

In policy terms, I think the liberal critics are largely right: Bush's actions don't match his words. From Russia to Uzbekistan to Equatorial Guinea, the United States has actually drawn closer to a whole series of tyrannies since September 11. . . .

But that's exactly the point. Bush's second inaugural doesn't challenge liberals at the level of policy; it challenges them at the level of rhetoric. And, unless they respond in kind, they'll experience the same fate that befell John Kerry. In policy terms, Kerry probably had a more serious democratization agenda than Bush. But, rhetorically, he never matched Bush's grandeur.

Didn't Beinart find Kerry's campaign speech on the need for freedom in Equatorial Guinea stirring? Actually, we don't think he gave such a speech, and we don't know what "serious democratization agenda" Beinart is talking about. This item suggests Kerry was much more concerned about "stability" than democracy.

What we really love about that Beinart passage, though, is the final two words. We thought we'd seen everything, but who could have imagined a liberal commentator talking about "Bush's grandeur"?

The Roots of Liberal Guilt
Yesterday's item on Kurt Andersen's reckoning with liberalism's moral crisis prompted an interesting analogy from reader Dale Hajost:

Imagine that a man is walking down a quiet street and passes an alleyway in which he sees another man assaulting a woman. What is he to do? He considers jumping in to defend her, but then realizes that that may be "risky" and even possibly "reckless." The safe thing to do is to keep moving on. After all he really didn't know the woman and he had no vested "interest" in saving her.

Moments later that same man looks behind him and sees that a second man has noticed the assault in the alleyway and has jumped in to defend the woman. The first man notices that the second man is about the same age, height, weight as he is but this man jumped in anyway. Uh oh, now he has a problem. Does he hope the second man does well, wins the fight, saves her honor and becomes the hero? What a disgrace that would be. After all, he could have done the same and chose not to. It would make his decision look awfully bad upon reflection. On the other hand, what if the second man were to become the second victim? Would it really make the first man feel smug knowing that that could have been him, but a man far better than him at least did something honorable yet "risky" and possibly "reckless"?

There's your "Hobbesian choice" simplified into micro terms in relation to Iraq. It's easy to see now which man is John Kerry and which man is George W. Bush. Or even better, which man is a liberal war protester continuing the protest even after the war has begun and which man is the soldier or Marine serving in harm's way willingly.

Incidentally, several readers inquired about the meaning of the term "Hobbesian choice," which was Andersen's. A Hobbesian choice is what you have when there is a solitary horse that is poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Gotcha! (Or Maybe Not)
Blogger Joe Fairbanks notes a hilarious exchange between Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D., Calif.) and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As the latter testified Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, the former tried but failed to catch him in a misstatement of fact:

Sanchez: Unfortunately, as I said, this committee has had a hard time assessing where we really stand with the Iraqi army as an effective fighting force. Over the past year, we've received incredibly widely fluctuating estimates of that. And I think you have a real credibility problem on this issue.

Rumsfeld: Fluctuations of what?

Sanchez: The fluctuations of--the numbers that you bandy around about how many troops we really have out there that are Iraqi police, et cetera, et cetera. . . .

Rusmfeld: Now, you say we bandy around numbers. They're not my numbers. I don't invent them. They come from Gen. Petraeus. . . .

Sanchez: I have Petraeus's numbers. They're different than your numbers, by the way.

Rumsfeld: Well, what's the date? They aren't different because these came from Petraeus. He may have two sets of numbers, but they are not different if the date's the same. The date on my paper here is Feb. 14. What's yours?

Sanchez: Dec. 20.

Rumsfeld: Not surprising there's a difference.

Sometimes it seems as though Congress is run by a bunch of amateurs.

This Just In
"Al-Qaida Still a Threat to America"--headline, Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb. 17

Now No One Can Find a Home
"Homeless Teens' Plight Moves City"--headline, Register-Guard (Eugene, Ore.), Feb. 17

Follow the Fetus
"Investigators found fetuses buried behind a public housing complex, spinning an ongoing federal corruption probe in a new direction," the Associated Press reports from Springfield, Mass.:

Authorities declined to say when the fetuses were buried or from where [sic] they originated.

Do we really need "authorities" to explain where fetuses come from? Didn't our parents ever talk to us about the birds and the bees?

Metaphor Alert
"The Vagina Monologues is not about lesbianism or man hating. It's about grabbing our notoriously taboo sexuality by the horns and cultivating it."--Laura Fausch, the Chronicle (Duke University), Feb. 18

So Much for White House Casual Fridays
"Victory for Bush on Suits"--headline, Washington Post, Feb. 18

No, That's Not Possible
"I'm sure some people consider my opinions silly."--Susan Estrich, RealClearPolitics.com, Feb. 18

'I'd Like to Break That Story'
"Rather to Host His Own Farewell Tribute on CBS"--headline, Reuters, Feb. 17

Can a Gantelope Elope With a Cantaloupe?
The blogosphere is supposed to be a great source of fact-checking; as our Peggy Noonan put it yesterday:

[Bloggers] use the tools of journalists (computer, keyboard, a spirit of inquiry, a willingness to ask the question) and of the Internet (Google, LexisNexis) to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden. They look for the telling quote, the ignored statistic, the data that have been submerged. What they are looking for is information that is true. When they get it they post it and include it in the debate. This is a public service.

But in practice it doesn't always work out this way. Consider a post yesterday, from blogger Andrew "The Gantelope" Coulson, titled "And Who Is This James Toronto Chap, Anyway?":

A few days ago, some MSM publication (I think it was called the Waltz Treat Journal) chided bloggers for engaging in an amateurish vendetta against CNN exec. Eason Jordan. Not considering this bit of whine spectating to be particularly newsworthy, we chose not to bother our readers with it.

Blogger David M believed otherwise, speculating yesterday on the authorship of the WTJ piece. We're embarrassed to admit that we need a little help following Dave's argument. Can someone please tell us who this James Toronto fellow is? (Isn't Toronto the name of the Canadian president?)

There are so many inaccuracies in this posting, we hardly know where to begin. First of all, although there is a city in Canada called Toronto, Canada doesn't have a president; as someone once observed, "they're not even a real country anyway."

Coulson pretty clearly is referring to us--that is to say, the author of this column. He has misspelled our name, which is Taranto, with two A's, like the city in Italy. Coulson could be forgiven for making this error--many others have--but the post to which he links spells it correctly! Failing to check the original posting is, to be frank, just plain sloppy.

But it gets worse. Back in December, we actually published an e-mail we'd received from Coulson and linked to his Gantelope blog. Obviously he is familiar with this column, which makes his misspelling of our name and his confusion about our identity even harder to understand. We know we're going to get angry e-mails for saying this, but it's almost as if he's asking not to be taken seriously.

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