Anti-Climacus

LINK: You know, I love the Hitch as much as anyone, but he's a bit off his rocker here:

"I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq."

I, too, would relish Democrats actually having to be serious and not merely snarky about foreign policy for a change (even in the Clinton era, when they at least had a vague handle on the concepts of humanitarianism and the value of democracy*, it seems to have been based off of policy triangulation, rather than principle). And certainly Bush's conversion on these issues should offer hope, but you can think of Bush perhaps as a man waiting for his cause; that is, he was uniquely well-suited to grasp the new geopolitical realities (so much of the carping over his leadership is because he himself pushed the standards of what is expected of a President in his handling of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and in Afghanistan). I don't know that one can have the same faith in Kerry, though I'm certain many do.

*Interestingly, in my IR class, we've been reading a bit of the democratization literature, and it's funny to read Democrats singing the virtues of universal democratization)