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Bob Kerrey lays out the Dem case for the war in Iraq.
… American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq’s middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. …
Marty Peretz liked Kerrey’s piece.
… Yes, it is clear that the country mostly believes that the war was a mistake or, at least, that is has been directed shabbily. But it is not at all clear that the country wants our military to go into retreat. Actually, the inability of the Democratic leadership to force date-certain terms for leaving the war-zone has saved the Democrats’ collective ass. Karl Rove probably wanted them to win this one. And, as for a Democratic leader who grasps the stakes, there is former Nebraska senator, current president of the New School and amputee Viet Nam war veteran Bob Kerrey who laid out the stakes in this morning’s Wall Street Journal: …
John Hood in a Corner post applauds Bob Kerrey’s op-ed. Then he calls attention to a WSJ reaction to Jimmy.
… As president, Mr. Carter managed to alienate nearly every major country in the world and did so without asserting American power in ways that might justify that alienation. No other president has crammed as many foreign policy debacles into a four-year period. The Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua and the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis are but two examples of many. Near the end of his term, it should be remembered, Mr. Carter’s approval rating fell to 21%, the lowest in the history of polling.
Of course, the reason Mr. Carter, and others, rank President Bush at the bottom is the Iraq war. Mr. Carter himself did not get the country into a war during his presidency, likely because he lacked the fortitude. …
William Murchison in Real Clear Politics has more on Carter.
… It was never the way of James Earl Carter Jr., to keep his moral pronouncements to himself, but this past weekend’s tirade — petty, vain, spiteful — is bad even by Carter’s low standards. In conversing with BBC radio and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he shows not the least concern for the spectacle of a former U.S. president calumniating one of his successors, together with a loyal American ally. …
IBD has started a 10 part series comparing Bush and Carter. First up; leadership.
… Jimmy Carter, the man who makes Neville Chamberlain look like Dirty Harry …
Jimmy Carter, the gift who keeps on giving. ITAGCOW? Is This A Great Country Or What?
Paul Greenberg tells us what we can learn from France. (Even here we get to trash Jimmy)
The French have been in decline even longer under Jacques Chirac, who by the time he left office had become as irrelevant as Jimmy Carter during the final year of his ever shrinking presidency. The French were ready for a change — just as Americans were in 1980, when Ronald Reagan came along radiating what was then a strange new sensation in American politics: optimism.
George Will thinks the French have a lot of work to do.
During the 25 years that the French left and some right-wing nationalists have spent reviling “cold, heartless impoverishing Anglo-American capitalism,” France’s per capita GDP has slumped from seventh in the world to 17th. Sarkozy’s task is to persuade the French that their government’s solicitousness on behalf of their security and leisure explains the work they must now do to reduce their insecurity.
Thomas Sowell comments on the “I” bill.
San Francisco Chronicle’s Politics blog discovers John Edwards’ $55,000 fee for poverty lecture at UC Davis.
… The earnings — though made before Edwards was a declared Democratic presidential candidate — could hand ammunition to his competition for the Democratic presidential nomination. The candidate — who was then the head of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina — chose to speak on “Poverty, the great moral issue facing America,” as his $55,000 topic at UC Davis. …
Naturally some of our friends had comments.
Reporters on the campaign trial are now seriously debating a key question: Is presidential candidate John Edwards, who has built his campaign around his appeal to the have-nots of America, a complete and utter phony? …
It turns out that poverty can be a lucrative industry …
Ryan Sager gets picked for this sentence;
You know things have gotten serious in a campaign when the candidates are insulting the sizes of each other’s guns. …
Carpe Diem posts on price controls in Venezuela with a quote from Mary Anastasia O’Grady in WSJ.
… Free prices are to an economy what microchips are to a computer. They carry information. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained in his legendary treatise 60 years ago, it is free prices that ensure that supply will meet demand. When Mr. Chávez imposed price controls in Venezuela, he destroyed the price mechanism. …