| Opening litany of the things Bush has done wrong, followed by... |
... But for all this, if I had a vote on Tuesday I would be voting to re-elect President Bush. It is partly Mr Bush's character. The perils of war really do demand leadership and moral clarity. It is partly, to be honest, the quality of his opponent. The more you see of John Kerry the more troubling the thought of his presidency becomes. Behind a lifetime of careful, calculated decision-making it is clear that he harbours a deep suspicion about the very idea of moral clarity in foreign policy. It is partly what Mr Bush has done. Afghanistan is an infinitely better and less threatening place today than it was four years ago. Iraq, despite the catalogue of errors, is still heading that way.
But above all, in this oppositional sort of age, when it is often easier to be defined by what one is against rather than what one is for, I have to say it is his enemies who most justify Mr Bush's re-election. The list of those whose world could be truly rocked on Tuesday is just too long and too rich to be ignored. If you think for a moment about those who would really be upset by a second Bush term, it becomes a lot easier to stomach. - The hordes of the bien-pensant Left in the universities and the media, the sort of liberals who tolerate everything except those who disagree with them.
- Secularist elites who disdain religiosity except when it comes from Muslim fanatics.
- Europhile Brits who drip contempt for everything their country has ever done and long for its disappearance into a Greater Europe.
- Absurd, isolationist conservatives in America and Britain who think the struggles for freedom are always someone else's fight.
- Hollywood sybarites and narcissists, self-appointed arbiters of a nation's morals.
- Soft-headed Europeans who think engagement and dialogue with mass murderers is the way to achieve lasting peace.
- French intellectuals for whom nothing has gone right in the world since 1789.
- The United Nations, which, if it had its multilateral way, would still be faithfully minding a world in which half the population lived under or in fear of Soviet aggression.
- Most of Belgium.
- Above all, of course, Middle Eastern militants. If your bitterest enemies are the sort of people who hack the heads off unarmed, innocent civilians, then I would say you are probably doing something right.
This may sound petty. It is not. This constellation of individuals, parties and institutions has very little in common other than the fact that it has contrived to be wrong on just about every important issue of my adult lifetime. And so, perhaps for the wrong reasons, perhaps less because he has been right and more because those who hate him so much have been so wrong, I want this President re-elected. Go on America. Make Their Day. |