Knight Ridder Election 2004: Free-Fire Zone

Jeff Schult of Connecticut writes a follow-up to our recent exchange. I'll just quote a few of his most recent remarks and my responses.

Jeff thinks the war on terrorism is a wash as an issue because "we have two candidates who have promised to wage a tough, aggressive war on terrorism. As president, either would have the exact same tools with which to wage the war. They both say they'll hunt the terrorists down and kill them using every means at their disposal. I believe them. I don't see how you can really draw a distinction.”

Certainly they have both said the same kinds of things, and it's true that Kerry would have access to everything Bush now does. It's plausible to argue that, once reality set in and Kerry realized he actually had to protect the United States, he would make the right choices. But I do not believe him. Everything in his adult life – except for his very brief time in Vietnam – screams anti-war, dove, negotiator, idealist. When push, comes to shove, I fear that, in a time of war, he will study and study and study until the time to act is past. That is the distinction I draw.

For Jeff, the "deal breaker" is the war in Iraq "and how it has turned out so far." Bush had a chance to win his vote if Iraq had come out "at this point, somehow, roughly the way his administration thought and promised it would 18 months ago."

I can't try to convince Jeff that Bush has done everything right in Iraq, because he hasn't. Some of what’s gone wrong there can be explained by the unpredictability of war, but not all of it. The administration made some faulty assumptions and, worse, has been reluctant to make changes when the mistakes became obvious. But it seems clear that Kerry, for all his confusing rhetoric on Iraq, would not even have gone in. This is the deal breaker for me. You either believe that Bush is right that the fight against terror must be aggressive rather than defensive, or you don't. I do.

It's pretty hard for a libertarian/conservative to disagree with Jeff here: "On domestic issues, I am concerned about Kerry's possible proclivities for spending but will count on a divided Congress for the next two to four years to keep the size of government in check. That worked fairly well during the Clinton years. And, frankly, Bush has been a horrible conservative when it comes to managing the size of government, and the conservative think tanks take him to task on it."

I'd only point out that any conservative should carefully add up the promises made by Kerry and Bush and see which ones would cost more. Though Bush has at times been a "bad conservative," it's also fair to say that Kerry is a very good liberal. And Bush has advanced some ideas for a second term, such as simplifying the tax code and allowing younger workers to opt out of Social Security, that are truly conservative. And, frankly, I don't know that I'd want to count on Congress for anything, let alone fiscal sanity.

I could go on – quoting Jeff and answering him – but I suspect it's pointless. He has made his gut check, and I have made mine. I doubt that all the intellectual exercises in the world would make much difference. Except for that famous handful of undecideds, people look at Bush and Kerry and see what they want to see; then they look through all the available hard evidence and settle on the part of it that supports the decision they have already made.

Seems a lot like religion to me. I've probably argued about religion more than any other topic, and I can quote you chapter and verse on every intellectual argument there is on each side of whether there is a God or not. I finally quit the argument as exasperating and pointless. Religion is a matter of faith; you either believe or you don't. (Or, more to the point, you believe one thing or the other; accepting an intelligent design or disbelieving its existence each takes an enormous leap of faith.) Those who argue religion are trying to fit intellectual round pegs into square holes of faith. They aren't capable of being moved one way or the other by logic; they just settle on the arguments that support what they already believe.

I think people are getting a little overwrought these days about the "divisiveness" in the country (especially in these last, intense days of a presidential campaign). Since we chose to run our politics with a two-party system, the nation is predisposed to have a more-or-less a 50-50 split. There have been exceptions – during the whole of WW II, for example, and for a few brief months after 9/11. But for the most part we've had two ways of looking at things.

But a couple of things do bear watching. One is the likelihood that we might settle into two more-or-less permanent camps. The chance seems ever slimmer that there could be gigantic shifts in short periods (the eight years between 1964 and 1972, for example, during which we went from a landslide for Johnson to a landslide for Nixon). And our positions are becoming more like articles of faith than party affiliation or even philosophical leanings. (Yes, yes, I know, there has always been an element of faith in politics; it's just at an unprecedented level today.)

So, no matter who wins, the country is going to be divided, which I find at least as interesting and important as who will lead us as Jeff might agree, we all have access to the same information; all the facts are there; we can all study the same history. But we come to two completely different world views. I think it might be productive to explore exactly what those world views are (less fluid than the past, more so?) and how we arrived at them. And what effect will the democratization of information (with the traditional gatekeepers less relied on) have?

posted by Leo Morris at # 4:54 PM

The new religion