KRISTOL CLARITY:

From Truth to Deception (William Kristol, October 12, 2002, washingtonpost.com )

What accounts for the president's success? Primarily it's the clarity, toughness and straightforwardness with which he has marshaled his arguments. There have been impressively serious and high-minded speeches, for example to the United Nations on Sept. 12 and in Cincinnati on Monday. There has been the release of information and the presentation of arguments, including the national security strategy in late September. And there have been the informal comments that have had real political punch, especially the not-so-veiled threat on Sept. 13 to Democrats standing for reelection that they could be accused of subordinating American security to the United Nations.

So the president has succeeded in explaining why Hussein must go, why time is not on our side, why deterrence can't be counted on, and why war is necessary. But now the president has to move from building support for a war to fighting a war. (The coming U.N. Security Council machinations are better understood as a prelude to war than as a real effort at persuasion.) The president now becomes a war leader, not merely -- though the "merely" is unfair -- a war mobilizer. He will have to demonstrate the skills described in his summer reading: Eliot Cohen's "Supreme Command" -- the ability to shape grand strategy and execute precise tactics in the fog of war.

This will require a change in the president's manner of speaking. He has benefited, in making the case for war, from an impressive clarity of presentation and lucidity of argument. But now his task is not to educate or persuade us. It is to defeat Saddam Hussein. And that will require the president, at times, to mislead rather than to clarify, to deceive rather than to explain. [...]

So when the president seems to equivocate about whether war is inevitable, when he holds out hope for inspections, when he talks about giving peace one last chance, when he seems to invite coups and rebellions while implying this might prevent an American occupation, supporters of the president's policy shouldn't worry that he is losing focus or retreating from the moral and strategic clarity of the past six weeks.

Whenever you see Bill Kristol on TV he seems like a perfectly sensible man; then you read him and wonder if he's not being intentionally self-mocking. This column is so obtuse as to make it impossible to believe he's serious.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 12, 2002 1:09 AM