Linkage (and other thoughts) Behind the Times

"For 99 percent-plus of people, they really couldn't care less who the bishop of diocese 'X' or 'Z' is," Danforth said, during the church's national legislative meeting. "Nor could they care less whether a liturgy for blessing same-sex unions is available in a prayer book or over the Internet."

If the Episcopal Church breaks apart, "we'll be one more little splinter, one more tiny wedge in the world of wedges," he warned.

Amen to that! Granted, it's been a long while since I've set foot in an Episcopal church. Given the fun that the Baptists, Episcopalians, and even the Catholics had in convention fun, I'm suddenly all the happier to belong to a non-denominational church.

And so, a mystery: How is it possible?with 2,500 U.S. solders dead, no discernible progress on the ground and a solid majority of the public now agreeing that the war in Iraq was a mistake?for the Democrats to seem so bollixed about the war and for the President to seem so confident? A good part of it is flawed strategy. Democrats keep hoping that the elections can be framed as a referendum on the Bush policy, and Republicans keep reminding the public that elections are a choice, not a referendum.

This ought to be an excerpt that my friends to my left ponder and reflect on a good deal if they're to have some serious hope for a positive outcome in November. I mean, think about it ... the nation has a majority favoring withdrawal for a war they see as a mistake (polling data will support this), yet there's a huge sense of apprehension about what they see as an overeagerness to withdraw on the part of some/most Democrats (my own conjecture here, of course). Martin Peretz may grate even my own nerves from time to time in his ability to outdo even my own jabs at these friends, but this exchange from The Plank is damning not in Marty's rhetoric (for once), but in the simplicity of the closing post:

Martin Peretz - KERRY FLOPS AGAIN:

John Kerry can be trumped by just about anybody. But today, the titular leader of the Democratic Party was trumped by Mitch McConnell, consummate cynic and the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. Kerry had announced that he would soon offer a measure requiring the administration to withdraw almost all of the American troops now in Iraq by the end of the year. What was in the tactical side of his brain when he made this pronunciamento before he had figured out the details of his proposal? Well, a way to get headlines, I suppose. But every time Kerry speaks about Iraq you are almost automatically reminded of his seriatim record which shows that he was all over the place on the matter. I was for it before I was against it or I was against it before I was for it. No matter. Well, instead of waiting for Kerry to even file his bill, McConnell engineered a vote on its essence. Ninty-three senators voted against it, showing that a huge majority of Democrats are wary of, if not actually against, a pull-out. Six senators voted in the affirmative, Kerry and his Massachusetts teammate Ted Kennedy, Russell Feingold (who, like Kerry, has unrealistic ambitions to be president), Barbara Boxer, Tom Harkin, and Robert C. Byrd, whose motives on everything are always suspect. Which tells you that for all their ragging against Bush's war, as they term it, even the Democratic Party isn't for a withdrawal from the field. Of course, this does not bode well for Kerry's perpetual aspirations to be president. But nothing else does either.

Michael Crowley - KERRY, MCCONNELL, &C.:

Marty, two quick notes about your item below. One is that there's a specific reason why Mitch McConnell forced a premature Senate vote on Kerry's Iraq-withdrawal resolution: Senate Democratic leaders, I'm reliably told, had been working on a middle-course alternative allowing their party members to oppose Kerry's plan without implicitly seeming to support Bush's policy (and thus without further enraging hard-core anti-war activists). Democrats had been expecting several more days to prepare, but it seems McConnell cut off his rivals at the parliamentary pass.

The second is that we can look forward to plenty more of Mitch McConnell's cunning cynicism, because he is the assumed successor to Bill Frist as Senate Republican leader after Frist's planned retirement at the end of this year.

Martin Peretz - KERRY, MCCONNELL, &C., CONTINUED:

So, Mike, why didn't Kerry shut up until his measure was completed and filed? The GOP response to his speech was absolutely predictable. Or couldn't he imagine what everybody knows? That Mitch McConnell plays rough. And that, alas, for Kerry, he has very little support for his proposal.

If the US Senate has all of six votes favoring withdrawal by the end of the year, then there's a huge disconnect between the anti-war left and the vast majority of the Democratic Party. At least as represented in the Senate. This is more than just a tactical defeat, though. I'm already predicting some "Blame Reid" nonsense to disavow the true believers of their truest hurdle: that while America may not see the Bush administration as exhibiting basic signs of competence with regard to Iraq (or just about any other issue for that matter), they can tell the difference between a sin of commission and one of omission. When it comes to defending America, that's the cold hard reality that it comes down to as we realize that elections are a choice, not a referendum. Oh, and Dianne Fienstein, who voted against withdrawal on the vote above, now states that Senate Dems are coming back ready to vote FOR a withdrawal plan. Sadly, the joke here just writes itself. Let's put the over/under for "against before I was for" references in the Senate debate at an even dozen, shall we?

More to the point, people see the Republicans as incapable of managing the monster they've helped create--this big Homeland Security/Intelligence apparatus that is like some huge buffed guy at the gym who looks strong but can't even put on his T-shirt without help because he's so muscle-bound. As for the Democrats, who co-created Homeland Security, no one--no one--thinks they would be more managerially competent. Nor does anyone expect the Democrats to be more visionary as to what needs to be done. The best they can hope is the Democrats competently serve their interest groups and let the benefits trickle down.

Unfortunately, she uses this as a tie-in with the Unity08 concept that's getting a little buzz out there. I can't say I'm totally unsympathetic to the concept of a bipartisan Presidential ticket. After all, I still maintain that Kerry-McCain '04 would have been a) a brilliant idea in governance and b) a surefire winner in politics. But I think the impetus for that was borne out of the debate witnessed in 2004 more than anything else. In other words, the jury is still out over whether Hillary, Mark Warner, George Allen, Newt Gingrich, or anyone else can really offer a narrative of the next decade that doesn't polarize and divide. Ross Perot wasn't a given as a third party candidate until seen in the perspective of an ineffective Bush-41 and a Democratic Party that, at the time, hadn't proven it's ability to connect with middle class and hence win an election. As we're seeing in Texas, it's the frustration with a given two-party status quo that drived independent candidates moreso than anything else.

Americans may have elected a Republican president and Congress, but they are unlikely to go back to a world in which one illness can devastate their last years or one storm can destroy their lives. Because government is the one institution that allows us some control over our future, conservatism, which distrusts government so much, is best viewed as a natural counter to liberalism, which, if left unchecked, tends towards wasteful bureaucracy. Indeed, as the Bush administration fully proves, conservatism remains a force of opposition even when it purports to be a governance party. And so the best that can be hoped for is that American voters will do for conservatives what they are unable to do themselves: to vote them out of office.

It just strikes me as amazing that there are people out there who bemoan the state of today's Republican Party and yet never had an unkind word to say about an illegal redistricting plan, lawbreaking legislators, or the standard practice of interpreting legislative rules with an imagination that would make Hunter Thompson spin in his grave.

Joe may well be dead set to prove that his worldview will hold up to a November audience just fine as-is. And I suspect that he'll end up proving that point. His statements and actions haven't really lent much possibility that he gives a rat's behind about whether he runs as a Dem or an Independent. In spite of himself, I find it hard to blame him. If he goes on to win in November, his point will be made rock solid: that the anti-war, single-issue left is an asterisk mark on the body politic. If they can't win statewide in Connecticut and forego the possibility of picking up two Congressional seats and the Governor's Mansion in Connecticut, one wonders if the reality will ever sink in.