You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you can end up getting 5 D’s in college, graduate without learning how to pronounce “Genghis Khan,” vote for things before you vote against them, find yourself unable to read a “joke” without insulting American troops, explain that you were actually trying, in the middle of a war, to insult their commander-in-chief, and end up stuck in an undisclosed location with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
On the other hand, if you make a real effort, you can graduate from Yale with better grades than John Kerry, get a master’s degree from Harvard, enter politics by beating the sainted Anne Richards, defeat a sitting Vice-President for president (in a time of — we thought — peace and prosperity), defeat the Democratic Party’s “war hero” for re-election, and rally your party 10 days before a critical mid-term election while your opponents dance prematurely in the end zone.
The reason John Kerry’s “joke” resonated last week is that — along with the Jon Carry photo — it exposed the essential un-seriousness of the Democratic Party. Neither the party, nor its chairman, nor its congressional leaders, nor its 2004 standard-bearer has any plan for Iraq, other than cut and run walk away.
It may never be clear whether John Kerry (a) botched an insult to the Commander-in-Chief, or (b) let slip a Freudian insight into his view of those who volunteered for the mission, or (c) both, but the remark caused voters to reconsider whether the central personality in this election is really Mark Foley (who?) or the party of Jon Carry.
On Election Day two years ago, I predicted the election would be “the last battle of the Vietnam War” — a culminating contest between two world views:
The impact of the Vietnam war in this election is not the difference between someone who served in Vietnam and someone who served in the military at home. Much less is it about their relative attendance records or the underlying facts of their medals.
Vietnam looms over this election as the conflict between two fundamentally different mindsets that emerged from that war — a conflict still unresolved today.
One mindset viewed the war as what Ronald Reagan called a "noble effort." The other opposed the war as the imperial overreach of an arrogant and immoral America.
The war in Vietnam was begun by a Democratic Party that first pledged to bear any burden to insure the survival of freedom (there was no oil in Vietnam); then committed the American military to prevent a Communist takeover of that country; and then, once the war became a morass, went into opposition and ultimately abandoned the country. . . .
That question is at the heart of the referendum we hold today. At bottom, Mr. Kerry’s objection to the war in Iraq and the anti-Bush animus he has tapped into have nothing to do with protecting our troops [or] conserving resources to go after terrorists elsewhere . . .
I was wrong that the 2004 election would be the last battle of the Vietnam War (and very wrong that “[l]ate this evening we will likely know which way the American people have decided to go . . .”). Two years later, the fundamental difference is still there, only even more pronounced, as Caroline Glick notes:
[T]he Democratic Party has essentially embraced Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s view that the war is not real and that the US can simply turn its back on it.
Rather than debate how best to win the war, the Democrats have purged their ranks of leaders like Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who wish to engage in such a debate. At the same time they have worked to limit public discourse to a witch hunt against those they argue have conspired to delude the American people into believing they are at war, and to attacking Bush for insisting on continuing the fight. . . .
The central contention of people like Walt and Mearsheimer and Democratic leaders like Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Kerry and Senator Ted Kennedy is that there is no global war that needs fighting. If they understood that the US is fighting a global war, then the question of whether Israel is part of the problem or part of the solution would have been settled definitively in Israel’s favor five years ago. . . .
Today US voters are going to the polls. The outcome of the Congressional elections will be critical for determining whether the war can be won . . . .
Despite my not-fully-accurate prediction from 2004, I am making the same one again today: At the last moment, the American people — with the assistance of Jon Carry — have focused on the fundamental realization that we are at war, that it is no joke, and that turning over Congress to a party favoring an ignominious withdrawal (again) would be — as is all history the second time over — a farce.
Late this evening we should know which way the American people have decided to go. And the whole world is watching.
UPDATE: Ed Lasky writes to note this Captain’s Quarters post about the European press, which is referring to today as “World Voting Day.” Der Spiegel reports that “Europeans so desperately want the Democrats to win — and the image of ‘Bush as the enemy’ has become so deeply ingrained in the European conscience.” Halp us, Jack Shirack, with your deeply ingrained conscience.