How 9/11 affected the candidates
Jonah Goldberg, at The Corner on National Review Online, notes that there has been an exchange concerning whether Kerry's pre-9/11 record should matter, and that Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan have concluded it doesn't. Drum's analysis for ignoring Kerry's record is premised on the fact that, since we know 9/11 changed Bush and we don't hold him accountable for stating during the 2000 campaign that he was opposed to nation-building, we similarly should not hold Kerry's pre-9/11 record against him, as 9/11 surely also changed Kerry's view of the world.
That is true only if you believe what Kerry says, which is not quite the stretch it was with President Clinton, but the old question about how you can if a politician is lying (his lips are moving) has some resonance here.
Drum wrote, "We judge Bush by how he's reacted after 9/11, not by his advisors' long records before taking office — and I'd argue that we should do the same with Kerry . . . ."
That argument works only if you can also accept that 9/11 changed Kerry's view of the world. But remember the not too distant past, when Kerry gave an interview to the NYT Magazine, and consider the following:
"…When I asked Kerry how Sept. 11 had changed him, either personally or politically, he seemed to freeze for a moment.
'"'It accelerated — '' He paused. ''I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it.'"
By his own admission, 9/11 did not "fundamentally change [Kerry's] view of the world." For this reason, as well as the fact that Vietnam was the cornerstone of the Democratic convention and has been the raison d'etre behind Kerry's campaign, Kerry's record is, as Mary Beth Cahill might put it, fair game.
That is true only if you believe what Kerry says, which is not quite the stretch it was with President Clinton, but the old question about how you can if a politician is lying (his lips are moving) has some resonance here.
Drum wrote, "We judge Bush by how he's reacted after 9/11, not by his advisors' long records before taking office — and I'd argue that we should do the same with Kerry . . . ."
That argument works only if you can also accept that 9/11 changed Kerry's view of the world. But remember the not too distant past, when Kerry gave an interview to the NYT Magazine, and consider the following:
"…When I asked Kerry how Sept. 11 had changed him, either personally or politically, he seemed to freeze for a moment.
'"'It accelerated — '' He paused. ''I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it.'"
By his own admission, 9/11 did not "fundamentally change [Kerry's] view of the world." For this reason, as well as the fact that Vietnam was the cornerstone of the Democratic convention and has been the raison d'etre behind Kerry's campaign, Kerry's record is, as Mary Beth Cahill might put it, fair game.
posted by Hal | 9:33 AM
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