Here’s David Frum on the Gore speech, which has so rattled Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the rest of the bloodthirsty non-combatants:
Gore’s speech was so lurid and over-the-top that the utterly outrageous things he said overshadow the merely bizarre. But in the category of the bizarre, did you notice this odd passage?
“Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and, unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country’s, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.”
That sentence was immediately followed by this one: “Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America’s approach to the Korean war when he was running for president in 1952.”What do you suppose Gore was thinking as he uttered those words? Was Korea a “national nightmare”? Does this former Democratic office holder really think that Harry Truman had put the “national honor” at risk? Ronald Reagan used to irritate Democrats by claiming Harry Truman as an icon of contemporary conservatism. Is Gore conceding that Reagan was right?
Funny to see the war-loving Frum shocked at any impled criticism of ‘Atom Bomb Harry’ and his splendid little war. As to Gore, while being defeated by the Supreme Court doesn’t automatically make you a good guy, still, he did endorse the only antiwar candidate in the running for the nomination, Howard Dean. As to all the things that are wrong with Gore — crazed environmentalism, worship of public schools, etc. — they are also wrong with Bush.
10:25 am on May 28, 2004
