From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Look
Who's Stalking
Remember all those angry speeches Bob Dole and Jack Kemp delivered about Bill
Clinton in 1997? Or the anti-Reagan orations of Walter Mondale and Geraldine
Ferraro circa 1985? Neither do we, because they didn't happen. Last year's losers,
however, lack the dignity their predecessors possessed.
"Kerry, Edwards Blast Bush Over Katrina" read an Associated Press headline yesterday, and one could be forgiven for wondering if Kedwards realize this is 2005 and not 2004. Here's a particularly rich line from the AP account:
In a blistering critique, Kerry said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was to Hurricane Katrina "what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; . . . what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "
How about "what John Kerry is to 'bring it on' "? Really, this is about as "blistering" as a glass of warm milk. Another AP story, meanwhile, reports that "Edwards is calling for a return of depression era job programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast."
Remember how when they were running for president, Kedwards argued that their plan would better prepare the nation for a natural disaster? Remember how Edwards, during his six years in the Senate, repeatedly introduced legislation reviving Depression-era job programs? Neither do we, because it didn't happen. Or maybe it did happen, but they certainly didn't emphasize it in their campaign, which centered on other issues:
- John Kerry served
in Vietnam.
- Vietnam veterans are liars.
- The war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong
time," and Kedwards were
right to vote for it.
- "Dick Cheney's daughter . . . is a lesbian."
This was the case for Kedwards. Amazingly, it was enough to attract more than 30 million votes, but they still lost--and they are evidently having great difficulty accepting that reality.
Do Kedwards--and, for that matter, much of the rest of today's Democratic Party--remind anyone else of a jilted boyfriend stalking his ex? (The ex, in this analogy, being the United States of America.) He hears that she is having a rough time with her new beau, so he seizes the opportunity to win her back, by badmouthing the beau and trumpeting his own virtues: How could she prefer him, I'm such a nice guy! But of course he isn't acting nice at all; his behavior is annoying, creepy, even menacing. Anyway, even if things don't work out with the new beau, there's no way she's going back to the ex, whom she ditched months ago for reasons that remain as sound as ever.
When you think about it this way, you realize why hate-harpy Cindy Sheehan is the perfect symbol of today's Democratic left. She spent the month of August literally stalking the president, and her various rantings on far-left Web sites reflect the same sort of narcissism and delusion that characterize someone in the grips of a romantic obsession.
Then again, Sheehan actually did lose someone she loved, whereas Kedwards only lost an election. They should follow the example of Mondale and Dole and take it like a man: get over it, move on and stop bothering the country that rejected them.
A Bargain at
Twice the Price
We haven't been reading Josh Marshall's blog much recently, because he is off
on another one of his manic and utterly tedious crusades. This one concerns
what Marshall describes as the "Gulf Coast wage cut"--i.e., President
Bush's decision to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates "prevailing"
(read: union) wages for government contractors, in the Katrina reconstruction
programs.
If you read Marshall regularly, you know how this works: He tries to divide all 535 members of Congress into various goofily named categories: "Wage-cut wobbling Weebles," "Davis-devoted defenders of decency," "Bacon-bypassing bamboozling bastards," that kind of thing. Some of his readers seem to get into the spirit of things, but their enthusiasm is a mystery to normal people. It's like soccer.
Anyway, we bring this up because a reader pointed out this post from Marshall's blog yesterday:
TPM is looking for a new web intern who'll be responsible for various aspects of on-going site design, site maintenance, assistance administering the TPM community site, TPMCafe, and work on our various projects like . . . our new tracking of which members of Congress are supporting President Bush's Gulf Coast Wage Cut. . . .
This is an unpaid internship.
When your money is at stake, Marshall is willing to let unions dictate wages. When it comes to his own money, he not only refuses to pay prevailing wages, he won't even pay the minimum wage--or indeed any wage at all! Just who is trying to bamboozle whom here?
There's
No Need to Be Insulting!
"Officials at All Levels Butt Heads Over Hurricane Relief Operations"--headline,
Washington Times, Sept. 20
Don't
Tell Laura
"Bush Eyes Rita as He Tours Gulf Coast"--subheadline, CNN.com, Sept. 20
To
the Bitter End--II
It looks as though John Roberts will be confirmed with only a few Democratic
votes. Bloomberg News reports that Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, announced
this afternoon that he will vote against the chief justice-designate. Reid's
words could have been scripted by the New
York Times editorial board:
"No one doubts that John Roberts is an excellent lawyer and an affable person," Reid of Nevada said on the floor of the Senate today. "But at the end of this process, I frankly have too many unanswered questions about the nominee to justify a vote confirming him to this enormously important lifetime position." . . .
In his speech today, Reid said that the decision "is a very close question" and stopped short of encouraging his fellow Democrats to oppose Roberts. The minority leader also said the party won't use parliamentary tactics to block the vote.
We're guessing this means no more than a dozen Democrats will vote for Roberts, and maybe considerably fewer.
The message for President Bush should be that when choosing a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, it is pointless to seek accommodation with Senate Democrats, who serve as little more than lapdogs for the Abortion Rights Alliance for the American Way and similar extremist groups.
Given Bush's efforts to reach out to black voters, he could do worse than to choose Janice Rogers Brown. If the Republicans are really lucky, the Democrats will be unable to restrain their prejudices, as Reid was when he made bigoted statements about Justice Clarence Thomas last year.
What's
Reid's Excuse?
"Boxer Remains Critical With Brain Injury"--headline, Associated Press,
Sept. 19
Mary
Jo Kopechne Could Not Be Reached for Comment
"Prison Time for Pond Plunge Death"--headline, WINS-AM Web site (New
York), Sept. 20
The
Summers Effect
Earlier this year, Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, set off a kerfuffle
when he made the commonsense observation that women have different priorities
from men. Today the New York Times reports that Summers was right:
At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.
There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.
Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. . . .
For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.
"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.
"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."
But this may be another case in which, à la the Roe effect, the feminist "solution" actually exacerbates the "problem." Think about it: The vast majority of today's young women are the daughters of women who decided to have children. Women who abjured motherhood for full-time careers can't very well pass their values on to the daughters they never had.
A
Feminist Success
From an essay by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the New York Times Book Review:
[Reinhold] Niebuhr summed up his political argument in a single powerful sentence: "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." (Niebuhr, in the fashion of the day, used "man" not to exculpate women but as shorthand for "human being.")
What does it mean that the New York Times cannot assume its readers are literate enough to know the meaning of a common word like man? It means that feminism, while failing to persuade women that children aren't worth having, at least succeeded in something.
Have
They Looked in the Chili?
"Wendy's Loses President"--headline, TheStreet.com, Sept. 19
Claims
Evidence Was 'Planted'
"Coffin Nailed for Fraud but Avoids Jail"--headline, Ottawa Sun, Sept. 20
Still
Crazy After All These Years
"Presidential assailant John W. Hinckley Jr., who is petitioning the court
for more freedom, is lonely and longing for a close relationship like the one
he had for many years with a former psychiatric patient, a psychologist testified
yesterday," reports the Washington Post:
"He wants to have a girlfriend. He wants intimate contact with a female," Paul Montalbano, chief of pretrial services at St. Elizabeths, the Southeast Washington mental hospital, testified yesterday.
The psychologist said such a desire is natural for a man who has ended a long relationship, as Hinckley did this year. Hinckley, 50, cut his ties to Leslie deVeau after the relationship came under scrutiny during hearings to decide whether he was ready for expanded freedoms. . . .
Hinckley's interest in women, viewed as natural by the psychologist, is disconcerting to the Justice Department's attorneys, who oppose any expansion of Hinckley's freedoms and who note that it was Hinckley's obsession with actress Jodie Foster that spurred him to open fire on Reagan in 1981.
The Post notes that there are questions as to "how Hinckley would handle courtship and respond to rejection out in the world, away from the structure and support of a hospital." Just finding a date may be a problem. DeVeau, his ex-girlfriend, was a fellow patient at St. Elizabeths, where she was confined after acquittal by reason of insanity in the killing of her 10-year-old daughter. How many other women are there with whom he has so much in common?
Then again, we hear Cindy Sheehan is single.
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