The State of the Parties

I watched the President's State of the Union speech. It was a speech that had to be seen to be fully appreciated. It wasn't just Bush talking. It was the interaction from the audience. Particularly the left half. Bush was tactically brilliant. He grabbed everything that had been thrown at him - the wiretap controversy, Social Security, spending, the energy crunch, Abramoff - and threw it right back, and most of it stuck. His enemies keep making the same two mistakes: they see him as vulnerable where he isn't, and they fail to see their own vulnerabilities on the exact same issues. It's as if they're projecting their own failings on to him.

Along the way, Bush blew the cover of the "loyal opposition" by spelling out the difference between constructive criticism and defeatism. And that audience reaction to the Social Security reform line is something they're never going to live down.

The speech wasn't perfect. It was awfully weak on domestic issues. For example, he didn't lob the energy issue back as hard as I would have liked. He should have dwelt on ANWR, in addition to all those technological solutions that won't pay off quick enough. But on foreign policy he reminded us all of what needed to be remembered - that we are in a war of civilizations, and nothing less than the future of freedom is at stake.

How about the Democratic response, by the eyebrow guy? It was pretty good, actually. I'd even say it was perfect. That is to say, it had no flaws, measured by the standard of the sort of speech it was. But Bush was better. Way better, despite his flaws. How can this be? It's simple. Bush's speech was an entirely different type of speech. A better type.

If you want to know exactly where Bush's speech was lacking, review the Democrat response to it. Kaine didn't miss a single opportunity. And he avoided all the usual pitfalls. He didn't attack the GWOT directly. he just nibbled on the corners - pensions and body armor. He attacked all the weak points, avoided all the strong points, and came out as well as could be hoped for. Kaine understands the rudiments of tactics.

But Bush won this contest. By the time he was halfway through it was already a foregone conclusion. The historians will ratify this judgment. Nothing Kaine could have said would have changed this.

Why? Two reasons: strategy and advanced tactics. Bush thinks strategically, exactly as a Commander in Chief of the leading democracy ought to. He has a vision, and he can articulate it, and he did. Democracy for the entire globe. What about tactics? Well, the way he turned all the criticisms back against his critics shows a mastery of tactics, beyond the beginner level.

His opposite number understands beginner tactics well enough. As for advanced tactics or strategy, he had no options there. His party has squandered all its best options with mindless carping on the war. It's not Kaine's fault. Well, actually it is. He picked a real loser of a party there.

(Speaking of strategy... I'm reminded of the first Presidential debate of 2004, when Bush was very much off his game. That fool Kerry chose a revealing analogy for the Iraq intervention: he said it was if in response to Pearl Harbor we had invaded... where was it? Somewhere other than North Africa, where we did in fact invade, and then went on to win the war Kerry showed vast ignorance both of history and of strategy in that remark. Bush could have hit that out of the park if he'd been more with it. Oh, well.)

What did the Democrat response have to offer against all this? Talk of management. Delivering government services efficiently. Good management. Effective management. Management, management, management. Now that's fine for the state and local levels. There pretty much everything is about management and delivering services. But the State of the Union is about the national level, and not just of any nation. Of the global superpower.

"There's a better way." A better way to do what? This, that and the other thing. But not the one important thing. Not a better way to make the world safe for democracy. Mr. Eyebrow didn't have anything to offer there. He was hoping we wouldn't notice.

What the Democrats don't seem to understand is that management isn't everything. At this level, you need leadership. Clinton didn't lead, he only managed. His foreign policy - such as it was - was what got us into this current mess. He tried to manage the terror problem, instead of solving it. That's the fly-swatting mentality. It's a poor substitute for vision and leadership.

To one whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Democrats understand logistics (maybe) and so they think everything is a logistical problem. Bush knows better. And the voters sense, if perhaps imperfectly, that Bush is right. This country needs a leader, not a Pointy Haired Boss.

Actually, I'm being generous there, in search of a war metaphor. What the Democrats understand isn't logistics in the military sense. They understand the idea of moving goods and information in an organization. The smarter ones actually understand how to do it, on a certain scale. But everything's more complicated when there are lunatics trying to kill you. Somehow I don't think Kaine would do a much better job than the U.S. military.

Bush makes many little mistakes. Mistakes that his political opponents jump on like starving pit bulls, and then don't know what to do with. Bush makes many little mistakes, but those who oppose him make one huge mistake: they refuse to acknowledge that we are fighting for the future of our civilization, and that we deserve to win. Even if they knew how to exploit Bush's little mistakes, this one vast blunder of theirs outweighs all of his goofs combined. It absolutely destroys the Democrats' credibility. And this is why Bush can't be bothered to learn how to pronounce "nuclear." He knows it doesn't really matter.

(It could have been worse. Cindy Sheehan managed to get herself arrested for disorderly conduct before she could get on the cameras. That would have been something to see. She got arrested on purpose, of course. She just misjudged the timing, and so lost her camera opp. Anyway, we got to watch Hillary's face. And we also got to see a few foreign dignitaries squirm.)

I blame the Left. The extremist Left have hijacked this party, and are running it into the ground in a vain hope of riding to power on its coattails. This is *not* a win-win scenario. Both the parasite and its host are sick, and are slowly dying. Such is the fate of useful idiots, and of those who try to use them beyond their usefulness.

Democrats and Leftists, ask not at whom the smirking chimp smirks. He smirks at thee.

And what about the Republicans after Bush? Can they come up with another visionary to continue the fight for freedom? Well, at least they know that's what's needed. I'm sure they'll find someone. The Democrats are too stupid even to look for one. They still think the Presidency is just some sort of an upper management position.


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