Anti-Climacus

LINK: Crooked Timber does a little dissection of Andrew Sullivan's 'whoever loses the election will actually win' thesis, which actually seems pretty accurate to me. I'm still going to vote for Bush, but I have some serious worries about where his domestic policy is going (I'm all for more spending on domestic programs, and some of this 'opportunity society' stuff sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure how long he can hold off the fiscal conservative backlash; I have concerns about his position on taxes, but I'm not really convinced Kerry is better--he stands to be worse, in fact, since Kerry would have to cut taxes more to get the same reputational effect that Bush would), and I think foreign policy needs a basic statement of first principles, and to go out from there, but I have doubts that will happen (I do, however, know that Kerry's instincts on foreign policy questions diverge wildly from mine, and I am a f.p.-driven voter at the moment). So a vote for Bush is, as I see it, a vote to at least retain the possibility of democratic expansion across the world; it's not much, but it's the best I'm going to get.