FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY:

SNAPSHOT: GEORGE W. BUSH (Margaret Warner, November 11, 1999, Online Newshour)

MARGARET WARNER: Texas Governor George W. Bush made it official yesterday, traveling to the New Hampshire capital, Concord, to formally file for the state's first-in- the-nation primary.

As stunning as it is to realize that George W. Bush was only now declaring his candidacy the last time around, even more surprising is to think about how much more clearly defined his candidacy was than are those of any of the Democrats running this time. You'd have had little trouble, even at that early date, describing the several ideas that Mr. Bush was running on: tax cuts, social security privatization, faith-based social services, education reform that included testing and vouchers, and missile defense. Sure, you might not know details--he may not even have set them all out by then--but you knew in rough detail what he'd do if he was elected.

Try summarizing to yourself the plans of Howard Dean and what do you come up with: opposes the Iraq War but would stay; opposes the tax cuts and will repeal them; and what else? The other guys are even murkier. Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry voted for the war but don't like it anymore but wouldn't quit either. All would repeal some portion or another of the tax cut. What else?

Does the Left simply have no ideas any more. or are they afraid to articulate the ones they do have? Where's a Democrat who will, like George W. Bush, tell us exactly what they want to do with the presidency?

MORE:
Democratic Quagmire (Geov Parrish, 11/05/03, Seattle Weekly)

LAST WEEK, IF YOU went to www.john kerry.com and followed the links to discover Kerry's thoughts on Iraq, you would finally reach the prompt: "What is Kerry's plan to win the peace in Iraq? Read here."

Clicking the link took you back to Kerry's home page.

Kerry's Web team inadvertently captured perfectly the problem Iraq presents to the nine major Democratic presidential hopefuls. All agree that President Bush has made a mess of things. But they've been so busy harping on Dubya's failures that few of us have any idea what any of them would do. There's this nagging suspicion that they don't know what they'd do. Ask, and they're likely to send you back to their home page: "Bush bad. Me good."

The reality is that no matter how flawed Bush's reasons for invading Iraq, the invasion happened. No matter how poorly planned the occupation has been, the U.S. still controls Iraq. No matter how corrupt the no-bid reconstruction projects have been, contracts are being signed and fortunes are being made. And no matter how absurd the mandate of American soldiers is, the bombs, grenades, bullets, and homemade mortars being fired at them are deadly, and the weapons they're firing back are deadlier still.

IF EVER THERE were a time this country needed to set aside sound-bite politics and have a serious discussion of what to do next, this would be it.

Dream on.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 11, 2003 6:26 AM