VARIOUS PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW what I think about Andrew Sullivan’s announcement that he won’t support Bush, and the hostile reactions it’s gotten.

I don’t have much to say about it, really. If you read a lot of lefty blogs, you know that people write nasty stuff about me all the time. I live with it. Interestingly, unlike (apparently) Andrew, I get less hatemail when I criticize Bush / Ashcroft / etc. than when I criticize the left. But then I’ve never waxed as rapturously about Bush as Sullivan has in the past. Maybe that makes a difference.

Andrew’s position seems to me to be driven largely by Bush’s support of the (non-starter) Federal Marriage Amendment. As someone who supports gay marriage pretty strongly (though less so than Andrew, I imagine) I can understand his disappointment. But it seems to me that Bush has done the least he realistically could have done on this issue, only supporting the Amendment when it became obvious that it wasn’t going anywhere, and then offering only token support. And though you can draw a distinction between Bush and Kerry on this issue, it’s not much of one, really. But obviously it seems bigger to Andrew than it does to me.

There are plenty of things that I disagree with Bush on — stem cell research (and pretty much all other biotech/bioethics issues), abortion, gay marriage, the Drug War, etc. If it weren’t for the war, I’d probably be on the fence. But I can’t take Kerry seriously on the war, and for me it’s the number one issue. For Sullivan, I guess, it’s not. I had thought that it was.