The Week - commentary on current events, politics - Column

National Review, Sept 2, 2002

-- "If Iraq came across the Jordan River, I would grab a rifle and geget in the trench and fight and die," Bill Clinton told a dinner for a Jewish charity in Toronto. And what would he have said to an Iraqi audience?

-- Speaking of Iraq, Dick Armey said, "I don't believe that America wiwill justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation." Armey does not believe that Iraq's refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspections is sufficient provocation: "What if the French decided they wanted to inspect American military facilities?" A fine analogy, if America had recently tried to conquer Canada through force of arms; tried to assassinate the former prime minister of France; used weapons of mass destruction; and had a totalitarian government with an expansionist ideology. Armey added that international law would not permit us to make an "unprovoked attack." What Armey is illustrating here is the intellectual decline of anti- interventionism on the right. He is not, after all, making the traditional libertarian or Old Right arguments against war; he is employing leftist tropes, asserting moral equivalence between America and Iraq and vaguely invoking international law. Conservatives have looked to Armey for leadership on a great many things over the years, but we expect that very few are going to follow his lead this time.

-- The blast at the cafeteria of Hebrew University in Jerusalem is ananother story in the grim diet of news from Israel. The death of five Americans in the attack prompted a statement from President Bush. "I'm just as angry as Israel is right now. I'm furious that innocent life is lost. However, through my fury, even though I am mad, I still believe peace is possible." When a Greek American, Ioannis Perdicaris, was kidnapped by a Moroccan bandit, Ahmed el-Raisuli, Teddy Roosevelt's State Department sent a cable saying "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." Now President Bush says, Americans are dead, but peace is alive. Why does the president think such a thing in wartime? Israel has been fighting its enemies on and off for more than 50 years. The United States has been engaged in a war of its own, since we were attacked last September. We must pursue our goals, undistracted by the crop circles of diplomacy. Among those goals must now be the condign punishment of Hamas, author of the attack, and its flacks and watercarriers in this country.

-- Ever since the 2000 campaign, Democrats have argued among themselves ababout whether Al Gore was wise to run as the champion of "the people" against "the powerful." The latest critic is Gore's own running mate, Joe Lieberman, who says that their campaign alienated middle-class voters "who don't see America as us versus them." Gore responded with a New York Times op-ed in which he argued that fighting for the people against the powerful was not only a successful campaign theme in 2000, but the historic mission of the Democratic party and, indeed, of the country. These are (characteristically for Gore) grandiose claims about what are almost entirely rhetorical differences. Gore is not planning to nationalize the banks. Lieberman is quite willing to portray issues of economic policy as a morality play when it suits him, as it no doubt will during his corporate-corruption hearings this fall. The two men agree on 98 percent of the issues. Both of them want to make government more powerful. Both favor racial preferences and abortion on demand, both oppose tax cuts and school choice. They have the same platform, the difference being whether it is cast in heroic or managerial terms. We suppose that it is better that a Democratic presidential candidate running on this platform not pretend that he is fighting some corrupt Latin American-style oligarchy. Ideologically, however, there is not much to choose from among the leading Democrats.

-- Republicans in New Hampshire must decide whether to back the rereelection bid of Sen. Bob Smith or to nominate the challenger, Rep. John Sununu. The ideological differences between the candidates are slight, as Bernadette Malone reports in this issue, with both men having strong conservative records. Conservatives should therefore choose the candidate who will support their common views most effectively. Sen. Smith, alas, is not that man. He is not favored to win in November if he is nominated, and one of the reasons he is not is his well-earned reputation for erratic judgment. And while Smith has spoken up for conservative causes on the Senate floor, he has done very little behind the scenes to build a working conservative majority. Our recommendation is that New Hampshire conservatives support Sununu, as the better candidate and the better senator.

-- On August 10, at the Democrats' gathering in Las Vegas, party chchairman Terry McAuliffe railed against President Bush's business record. "How can he restore confidence to Wall Street when he has engaged in the same practices he condemns today?" McAuliffe roared, apparently referring to the president's decade-old sale of stock in Harken Energy. This is getting tiresome, but let's remind McAuliffe one more time: In the early '90s, the Securities and Exchange Commission did a thorough investigation of the Harken stock sale. SEC experts found no reason to take any action against Bush. All the available evidence suggests that Bush did not take part in Enron-style practices. He did not take part in WorldCom-style practices. He did not take part in Martha Stewart-style practices. There are, in fact, more interesting questions about McAuliffe's business career than there are about Bush's. How did he make all that money from the now-bankrupt Global Crossing? What about that Florida land deal? And that bank? If Republicans push hard enough, McAuliffe might be forced to answer -- and now would be a good time to start.