KH: The Blog

Long time readers of this blog will know that William Saletan often infuriates me with his shrill attacks on the President. What bugs me is not that he disagrees with me or with President Bush but his tendency towards sophism and emotional diatribes. He is constantly building constructs that show Bush is not only wrong but dangerously and delusionally wrong. Out of this comes a righteous indignation and petulance that just gets under my nerves.

Well, he is up to it once again. This time it centers on the issue of the so called Global Test. When Kerry made the Global Test remark initially Saletan argued that it wasn’t so much giving a veto to foreign governments, which Kerry explicitly denied, but rather a simply standard of evidence for Americans and others to judge our actions. Saletan also critiqued Bush for using the terms “the President” and “the Oval Office” claiming that Bush is refusing to be held accountable by American citizens. In this way the Global Test simply means that Kerry will lay out his evidence and reasoning to the public in a convincing manner before taking military action.

Saletan furthers this argument in light of the exchange from Wednesday’s debate where Kerry described the test as an “international truth standard.” President Bush again attacked Kerry requiring a test for American intervention. Saletan jumps on this and again argues that Bush refuses to provide evidence or rationales for his policies but rather ducks the truth by implying that it is unnecessary. He ends his piece with this odd conclusion:

I know I’ve been hard on the president lately. I’d like to say something nice about him. I’d like to be “fair and balanced.” But my first responsibility as a reporter is to the truth. When one candidate tells half the truth, and the other says the truth doesn’t matter, it becomes irresponsible for me or any other journalist not to report that by that standard—the standard of respecting the truth standard—one candidate is head and shoulders above the other.

This is exactly the type of comment that drives me crazy. Saletan is willfully twisting Bush’s words to construct the meaning that Saletan wants to convey. Bush never said or implied that “truth doesn’t matter.” What Bush has been insisting on is that the President must judge the evidence and make a decision based on the national security of this country. Bush isn’t saying that evidence or truth doesn’t matter. If he was why would he be constantly arguing that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do? Why did he go to the trouble of sending Colin Powell to the UN? What was the point of all of those UN resolutions? Bush is perfectly comfortable making the case for the war in Iraq (although he may struggle at times to do it well).

No, the key question here is who is the judge and why? There are three things that I think Saletan refuses to consider in his criticism of Bush. The first is the moral bankruptcy of much of the international community. Saletan has largely ignored a crucial element of the Duelfur report: that the UN community was effectively being bribed to coddle a brutal dictator. France and Germany were not willing to be convinced by the truth because they had already made their decision based on their own selfish and unethical motivations. In fact, France and Germany agreed with the US on the crucial issue of whether Iraq had WMDs but refused to act despite the facts as we knew them at the time. Bush is saying that Kerry’s test is dangerous because it transfers the focus of the decision from national security to public relations. Bush isn’t saying truth doesn’t matter, he is saying that decision rests with the President not with some amorphous “international truth standard” that can be manipulated and demagogued to the detriment of US national security. He is saying I won’t take that test because it is rigged and always will be.

Even if the standard weren’t rigged, the odds of coming to consensus before action are extremely low. Saletan has an idealistic belief that somehow we can all agree on some sort of international truth standard that will convince the world that our actions are just and right. But how does this work exactly? Who determines what the standard is and who decides when it is met? How many people do you need to convince before you have met the test? What happens when the evidence is murky and unclear? What happens when there is no consensus on what the truth is? When you throw open decisions about national security to an open debate of this sort you are likely to get delay and chaos not consensus. The oft remarked irony is that when there was a remarkable international consensus on Iraq during the first gulf war John Kerry voted against it. If this standard is so clear then why didn’t Kerry recognize it when it actually existed?

In addition to misunderstanding the international component of this test and naively assuming there would be consensus on such a controversial question, Saletan also misjudges the domestic side. Bush wasn’t saying his isn’t accountable – he is running for President for Pete’s sake! Rather Bush takes a republican (small r) view of this issue. He makes his decisions based on his principles and his judgment as to what is in the best interest of this country. Once those decisions are made he expects the public and history to judge him. Ironically, in one of the most criticized portions of the second debate Bush made this clear. When asked about three mistakes he has made and what he has done to correct them Bush clearly stated that he expects history to judge him on the decisions he has made. Bush will lay out his principles and his reasons – about why he thinks he is right about the big issues – and let the voters judge him. What Bush objects to is a constant trimming of one’s sails to the public mood or sentiment without regard to the long term national interest or your principals.

Not surprisingly this is exactly what John Kerry has been perceived as doing. Bush’s attack on Kerry works because no matter how many times he tries to deny it his entire career indicates that if push comes to shove he will vacillate and try to have it both ways. Does anyone really believe that Kerry would take action if the UN was against it? Does anyone really think that Kerry would act unilaterally in any but the most extreme situation? No. Kerry has been an internationalist dove on every major foreign policy issue of the last quarter century. As Jonah Goldberg said at a debate on Wednesday, Kerry would rather be wrong in a group than be right and go it alone.

In the end, no one thinks that Kerry will give a literal veto to other countries when it comes to national security. What Bush and his supporters believe is that Kerry over-values the opinion of the international community to such a degree that it has the effect of putting diplomacy over national security. President Bush by way of contrast pledges to determine national security first and then seek allies whose interests align with ours. Bush is willing to bear the burden of making these decisions and letting the voters judge whether he made the right call. Given the moral bankruptcy of much of the UN and even our former allies in Europe I think Bush’s vision is the correct one.