Orson Scott Card, Meet Margaret Thatcher

North Carolina-based (I believe) author Orson Scott Card had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, and it threw a couple of rhetorical bombs at his fellow Democrats. I thought it was a good column, from what appears to be a good man.¹

Some choice cuts:

[T]heir platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

I've often wondered something along that line m'self. Given that Clinton spent eight years hauling directly to the middle of wherever everyone else wanted to go (and seemingly regardless of the merit of any one position in any particular debate) you'd think the professional electoratsia in the Democratic National Committee would know how poorly superheated firebrand rhetoric plays. Lord knows they reminded our people time and time again of that.

The more I think about it, there must be some connection between this firebrand mentality and what appears to be more of a focus in base energizing and mobilization in current electoral politics (i.e. telling them what they want to hear; preaching to the choir) instead of doing what President Nixon might suggest, namely leadership in saying "This is where I am. I am right. Follow me." Of course, President Nixon also said that Republicans were to run to the right in the primaries and back towards the center in the general election; for all I know, Dean's people are holding that up to a mirror and reading it 'run left' and 'to the center'.

Anyways. Maybe I don't see a lot of this because I just don't care about Governor Dean. He's a novice and probably has the Federal-level governing ability implied by that. I'm personally still waiting for Joe Lieberman or perhaps John Edwards and Richard Gephardt to take off, and put adults back in charge of the Democratic Party. I don't want the Democrats marginalized as a party, primarily because I don't know who's most likely to take their place, and I don't like uncertainty at this level. Similarly, they force Republicans and conservatives to keep the intellectual power plants at full load. That's good for us and that's good for America.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

Mr. Card, if you love your party, you might not want to wait until after this election. Although I certainly don't think sanity's going down without a fight in the Democrats, these Dean people are, to steal a phrase from Smith, like a virus. As one recent article on Doc Strange put it, "When most candidates commit gaffes, the money dries up. When Howard Dean commits a gaffe, the money comes flowing in."

This leads me to another point: Does the FEC have adequate oversight of these web-based donations? Several of us at the school were trying to figure this out, and we don't know where the law is on donations of that kind. Between the Clark and Dean types who'd post saying "I just gave $x to Wesley/Howard!!" and list their donation numbers, I'm almost convinced that election-cycle donation limits are being reached somewhere.

Next up, a nasty slap at Reuters, who usually deserves it:

Reuters recently ran a feature that trumpeted the "fact" that U.S. casualties in Iraq have now surpassed U.S. casualties in the first three years of the Vietnam War. Never mind that this is a specious distortion of the facts, which depends on the ignorance of American readers. The fact is that during the first three years of the war in Vietnam, dating from the official "beginning" of the war in 1961, American casualties were low because (a) we had fewer than 20,000 soldiers there, (b) most of them were advisers, deliberately trying to avoid a direct combat role, (c) our few combat troops were special forces, who generally get to pick and choose the time and place of their combat, and (d) because our presence was so much smaller, there were fewer American targets than in Iraq today.

Harrumph! Mr. Card, you've forgotten the primary rule of Reuters: Never let little inconvenient things like facts (e.g. what you've illustrated that counterpoint with) stand in the way of an ideological (probably trans-national or at the very least pro-European Community) bias. You got that? Now we see why you're just a (pretty prolific, good, and awarded) writer of books and are not a member of the Fourth Estate. Tsk tsk!

The old SSI wargame Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic used to have an animated officer to report hits on enemy vessels. If that little dude were here, he'd say "PENETRATING HIT, 16", TO GOOD SHIP LIBERALPOP". Mr. Card lands a bunch of large caliber hits on the whole "I'm not unpatriotic for calling Bush the equivalent of Hitler or for wanting Saddam Hussein to win" crowd:

Not at all--I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like--but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.

Patriots like Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 when General George Catlett Marshall asked him to basically throw the election in order to preserve an American cryptographic advantage. I'd like to believe that I would have made Dewey's choice, but there are times when I get the feeling that a lot of politicians today wouldn't be real men such as Dewey. Or Marshall, for that matter. (NB, Wesley Clark: You would rise in my estimation if I thought you capable of standing within sight of Marshall or any other of our World War II leaders (even Admiral King) without being required by objective fairness to scream "Unworthy" while ducking your head if they drew near.)

I would not have chosen Afghanistan and Iraq to start with; Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya were much more culpable and militarily more important to neutralize as sponsors of terror. (They say that Libya and Sudan have changed their tune lately, but I have my doubts.)

I don't necessarily agree with the first part of this sentence. After 11 September 2001, it was politically necessary to strike directly at al-Qaeda, and in a dramatic fashion that said "America chooses to slaughter her attackers". I understand and concede---in fact I agree---that targets of military importance ought to be struck, but we had to go and ring Osama bin Laden's bell, whether or not that helped the overall war effort. War is one of those complex things with public relations, political, and military components that often may not make immediate obvious sense. I believe that Mr. Card's statements miss the mark here. Striking the Sudanese may be necessary (and I think a good idea for what I keep hearing about their pro-slavery and anti-Christian policies), but it wouldn't have made a lot of sense in terms of getting revenge for the immediate 11 September attacks. The point is, however, moot in that we've already gone to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Card turns from noting the need for political unity in order to achieve victory and to the politico-media front, and after some ruminations, produces this gem:

And in all the campaign rhetoric, I keep looking, as a Democrat, for a single candidate who is actually offering a significant improvement over the Republican policies that in fact don't work, while supporting or improving upon the American policies that will help make us and our children secure against terrorists.

Well, I may disagree on several things with OSC in terms of domestic or even foreign policy, but at the same time, he appears to be what Margaret Thatcher once said of M.S. Gorbachev, "a man with whom we can do business". I don't expect everyone in this country to agree with me---since I'm human and automatically capable of error, this is a good thing---but I also don't have time for the types who foam at the mouth and who can't accept reasonable disagreement. That kind of behavior pretty much in my book cuts the foamer out of reasonable debate. Of course, this also has the effect of cutting many in the loudmouth wing---i.e. the Dean "Democratic" wing---of the Democratic Party out of the people whose input I'll listen to. So be it. One can only hope that the adults take control of the Democratic machine soon; much more of MoveOn and the Dean camp, and something will have to arise to take its place. That's not a good thing.

I am glad I've been reading Card since the last Gulf war; it seems that he's not only a good writer, but a good thinker.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Kevin Patrick at Blogs for Bush.

¹ Yes, that's right, I said that a Democrat was a good man. I'm from the rural South and I've been raised to speak well of good people, regardless of party affiliation.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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