Growing anti-Bush self-delusion in the blogosphere… and not just among libertarian hawks. Sullivan calls himself conservative, but he’s not a social conservative, so he’s with Kerry. And with all due respect to Virginia Postrel it’s the FMA that’s the deal-breaker with Sullivan. Ironically, Sullivan writes today that it is those who think the FMA is doomed that are delusional, though the polling on the FMA shows nowhere near the level of popular support necessary to pass it: http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm

Mickey Kaus, a non-libertarian and Kerry critic, has officially bought into the “gold watch” argument recently described by Peggy Noonan (but which Sullivan sketched first in February). Kaus wrote that we need to take a “time out” in the war, a proposition so laughable that he’s had to edit the post and explain that he really meant that we need to consolidate and have less swagger.

The belief that Kerry will adequately prosecute the War can be shown to be self-delusion from Kerry’s performance in the Feb. 15, 2004 Democratic Primary Debate:

http://www.wisconsindebate.com/transcript.asp

Craig Gilbert?
GILBERT: Senator Kerry, President Bush a week ago on “Meet the Press” described himself as a war president. He said he’s got war on his mind as he considers these policies and decisions he has to make. If you were elected, would you see yourself as a war president?

KERRY: I’d see myself first of all as a jobs president, as a health care president, as an education president and also an environmental president. And add them all together, you can’t be safe at home today unless you are also safe
abroad. So I would see myself as a very different kind of global leader than George Bush. Let me be precise.

He has ignored North Korea for almost two years. I would never have cut off the negotiations of bilateral discussion with North Korea. I think he’s made the world less safe because of it.

He has ignored AIDS on a global basis until finally, this year, for political reasons, they’re starting to move. They still haven’t adopted the bill that we wrote three years which could’ve done something. He’s ignored the cooperative threat reduction that Howard just referred to. We didn’t buy up the nuclear material we could have to make the world safer.

He walked away from the global warming treaty. He abandoned the work of 160 nations that worked for 10 years to try to make the world safer. He didn’t continue the efforts in the Middle East with an envoy who stayed there and helped to push that process forward.

I think there is an enormous agenda for us in fighting an effective war on terror. And part of it is by building a stronger intelligence organization, law enforcement, but most importantly, the war on terror is not going to be completely won until we have the greatest level of cooperation we’ve ever had globally.

The worst thing this president does is his lack of cooperation with other countries.

So I will lead in a different way, and I will not just sit there and talk about the war. I’ll talk about all of the issues and provide solutions for America.
———

In short:

To Kerry, the War on Terror is Job Five. To Kerry, Bush should not have cut off bilateral talks with N. Korea, but the worst thing Bush does is not cooperate with other countries. To Kerry, Bush somehow endangered national security by abandoning the Kyoto Treaty, which Clinton never submmitted to the Senate because there was literally no support for it there. To Kerry, the War is just one issue among many. To Kerry, terrorism is a law enforcement issue — the very policy that brought us 9/11. To Kerry (and Edwards, for that matter), it is acceptable to cast a protest vote against funding the War, in order to pander to activists in the primaries.