Jesse Helms turns against the tax cuts.
William F. Buckley turns against the war.
Bruce Bartlett makes the fiscal case for Clinton nostalgia, and Julian Sanchez says he’s hearing a lot of that sort of thing.
Tyler Cowen requests an invitation to join the Ranks of the Shrill, over the tightening of the Cuban embargo.
It might be that after John Kerry makes himself more visible we’ll see some rallying around Bush. But in the meantime, one wouldn’t say that Bush’s natural base is sounding very enthusiastic about him or his major decisions or his decision-making procedures these days.
I’ve never cast a vote for a major-party candidate for President. To the best of my recollection I’ve never even cast a vote for a major-party candidate for the Senate or for a governorship. And in some important ways my natural affinities lie to the right rather than to the left, especially among academics, journalists, and politicos. (That is to say, my affinities really do not lie with the grassroots right, where social conservatism reigns.) But, assuming Kerry doesn’t pick Gephardt or resume his trade-bashing noises, I’m steeling myself to cast a major-party presidential vote this November.
I know a lot of Libertarians are leaning Democratic this year because they oppose the Iraq War. I’m leaning that way in part because I supported it, and thought it was a truly important project. Some combination, or some complicated interaction, of terrible incompetence; an absolute prioritization of political over policy considerations; and a serious contempt for outside, contrary, disinterested, or expert opinion have made a serious mess of Iraq, trade policy, fiscal policy, and much else besides.
I dislike Kerry. I’ve disliked him for fifteen years; in New Hampshire we had plenty enough exposure to him to leave me sick of him a long time ago. And, man oh man would I prefer to be supporting a pro-Social Security privatization, pro-voucher, pro-tax cut incumbent president who was serious about fighting the war on terrorism and democratizing the Middle East and who might appoint Supreme Court justices who would enforce a strict reading of the Commerce Clause. Even support for the Federal Marriage Amendment wouldn’t outweigh all of that, since the President doesn’t play a direct role in amending the Constitution and anyway I feel sure that the FMA will never pass.
But we’ve had no Social Security reform, no push for vouchers, atrocious incompetence and policy made for the wrong reasons on the important foreign policy questions, protectionism, agricultural subsidies, and a spending explosion. All that’s left are a) the tax cuts, which are good but something close to meaningless in the absence of spending cuts; b) a general positioning as “hawkish;” and c) annoyance at various elements of the left who I’d rather not be aligned with and certainly don’t want to listen to crowing. (I really don’t want Michael Moore to spend four years feeling like, and crowing that, he decided a presidential election.) Those aren’t sufficient reasons to outweigh the general inability to govern competently or to make good policy judgments.
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