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The Other Candidate Bounce (Sebastian Mallaby, August 9, 2004, Washington Post)

So they say that we are polarized. People either loathe George Bush with a visceral intensity, or else they loathe the loathers. Well, maybe this describes the majority out there, but it doesn't describe me. Call me a flip-flopper if you want, but I bounce back and forth between the candidates.

Begin with foreign policy. Bush is right about the big lessons of Sept. 11: that terrorism is a mortal threat; that its root causes lie in poverty and state failure; that you can't sit about waiting for the enemy to declare war, so you need the option of preemption.

Bush smashed the Taliban in Afghanistan, even though large parts of the Democratic foreign policy establishment opposed any strategy involving boots on the ground. Bush announced the biggest expansion in foreign assistance in recent memory and designed a smart way of dispensing it. Bush ousted Saddam Hussein, whereas the Democratic establishment, which also believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and also talked the talk of regime change, would never have done anything so risky.

John Kerry, on the other hand, is a lot more timid.

Pretty amusing column about how Mr. Mallaby agrees with George Bush on every issue but is disgusted by the political realities of implementing them. Of course with Senator Kerry you'd get all the disgusting politics with no useful ideas. Doesn't seem like a tough choice.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2004 3:37 PM