Michael Moore

Did Michael Moore hurt the democrats? I've never been sure of this argument - I'm more inclined to think the democrats hurt themselves by letting him sit with Jimmy Carter at the convention and so forth...and not publically dismissing his position with respect to theirs....it's the typical democrat thing to do - wait and see how popular his message is and then decide where they stand on it.

Instapundit cites Moore hugging Wes Clark as a symbol of Clark's doom. Early on, I thought Clark might've been the guy....I was quickly proven wrong. But I always thought the way to beat Bush was going to be a right-side attack on Foreign Policy. To say, look, we haven't significant hurt Al Queda ENOUGH. We should have gone in the day after 9/11 and gotten as many of the leaders as possible. We had warned the Taliban prior to 9/11, in the Clinton administration, that if Bin Laden does anything to us, it's your ass. But then we gave them another chance.

Such a response would have had two major effects - one, it would have appeared that we knew what we were up against. It would have demonstrated preparation and readiness to respond. It would also have been be nearly impossible to critique - we got hit hard and we're hitting back even harder.

The dems could have articulated the type of war we are fighting - one against Islamic Fascism as opposed to this "war on terror." We could have defined our goals - elimination of Islamism and how we're going to do it: solicit support of all countries and punish those who dont' support the "War on Islamicism," how to measure progress: FDR used to give Friday Evening chats, updating the country on WWII progress - something like that, candid, honest, and not clouded with rhetoric.

I thought maybe Clark was this type of guy. He never really got rolling, though, and I think got too mixed up with Michael Moore, etc, which way have make him look anti-war or even worse, like Michael Moore's candidate.

Anyhow, I didn't feel this way after 9/11, but do now, and wish I had leaders who would have lead rather than apply what they think is popular.