A GOOD WAY TO SPEND 9 BUCKS THIS MONTH (13 IN CANADA)

If you haven't checked out the September / October 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs, you should, for three reasons.

First, there is a sobering article by Stephen Flynn on the terrifying inadequacies of the Bush administration's approach to homeland security. If you know Flynn's argument already, you won't find much new here, but the article is a good distillation of several important claims:

• The Bush administration has failed to bolster the nation's security infrastructure.* Bush's discussion of a "tax gap" in the first debate was the most revealing expression of this administration's fiscal priorities and its approach to security matters. Kerry has been listening to Flynn in a way that Bush will never be able to, because the latter has boxed himself into a campaign strategy premised on the absurd proposition that they have done everything right over the past three years. If you can't admit that you've been wrong, how can you be trusted to fix the problems you've helped to create?


• The vague "war on terror" prosecuted by this administration is comparable to the French attempt to hold the Maginot Line against Nazi Germany. Much like the French in WWI, we are fighting the last war, which in our case involves national armies occupying territory, instead of flexible, broad-based international and domestic responses to the financial and political disruptions that will follow the next terrorist attack.


• A free market unassisted by government is not going to supply the security infrastructure needed to obstruct and respond to the next terrorist attack. Firms that make the necessary security adjustments will be at competitive disadvantage. Flynn notes that the temptations to free ride on the security preparations of others are simply too great to be overcome in the absence of government intervention.


• Because encouraging panic is one of the main goals of terrorism, developing a domestic security infrastructure will itself help to deter terrorism by limiting the prospective damage and disruption of terrorist attacks. In addition, domestic preparedness can serve double duty in the event of natural disasters.

Second, when you're done with that essay, check out Larry Diamond's article "What Went Wrong in Iraq." The general point is well known -- the administration failed to pay attention to those who actually thought about the post-war and occupation period. But as a former on-the-ground advisor to the CPA, Diamond has an insider's perspective on the failures of the administration's Iraq policies.

And third, if you get the print edition, you can also read Ashton Carter's discussion of the Bush administration's failures in the area of nuclear and biological weapons proliferation. It's not a pretty story. For Carter, Bush hasn't been able to come up with anything more inspired than "piecemeal extensions of long-standing policies" -- in an area that the President has argued is the greatest danger facing the U.S. today.

Of course, if you've paid attention to the debates, you'll have gotten -- from Kerry -- the gist of the main lines of Flynn's, Diamond's, and Carter's criticism.

I cannot believe that anyone still thinks that this President's security policies are a reason to reelect him. One could actually make an argument that this President's reelection bid has itself made the country less safer, to the extent that he has tried to argue that the war in Iraq will allow us to fight "the terrorists" abroad "so that we don't have to fight them at home." Talk about inducing a dangerous complacency.


----------

*MORE: Note that Flynn's claim with respect to the Bush administration's inadequacies is limited to the first sentence; the rest of the paragraph is my interpretation of its significance.

ANOTHER REASON I'M OPTIMISTIC ABOUT KERRY

I fully expect John Kerry to be the next President of the U.S. In the coming weeks, I'll be working on a suggested concession speech for Bush for the night of November 4th, [or 2nd, rather] or for whatever day the results are finally deemed official by whatever authority has the legitimacy to do so.

In 2000, many folks thought that the presidency didn't really matter. After all, in the late 1990s we were prosperous, mostly respected in the world, and strong enough to be able to afford spending months worrying about whether to impeach and remove President Clinton over an irrelevant ethical lapse that had been magnified through the looking glass of rabid partisan hatred and well-meaning but misguided right-wing moralism.

The burning issues of 2000 were -- well, what, again, exactly? How to spend budget surpluses? The "tone" in Washington? When your biggest problems seem to be 1) how to divvy up money among competing valid claims, and 2) the fact that angry men and women tried to bring down a President whom they disliked because of his political skill and his policy priorities, then why not go for the affable but slow-witted and tongue-tied Baptist Methodist Prince Hal from Texas?

The President as beer-buddy choice has died a pretty horrible death over the past few years, though. The last few years have awakened us out of our surplus-induced slumber and made plain the fact that the President is both the commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world, and an important player in policy debates that will have long-lasting and potentially devastating impacts.

With respect to Bush in particular, he is not as affable as he seemed -- the first debate showed us a petty, angry, isolated man who doesn't like to hear himself criticized -- and his slow wit probably leaves him vulnerable to being influenced by impassioned ideologues and subject to the power of his official subordinates. Self-criticism is obviously neither Bush's strong suit nor an element in his preferred public persona, but we all know that ongoing adjustment is vital to success in any important venture.

Bush is quite possibly the only incumbent President in recent history who appears less qualified to be President now than he did when he took office, and in 2000 Bush was arguably barely qualified to begin with. Even worse, we'll be living with the effects of his bad choices in fiscal policy and in security and foreign policy for years to come.

The polls look good for Kerry. Organization on the ground seems to favor Democrats, although no one can tell for sure. Dems have also done a great deal of prep work for the inevitable legal battles over election results in swing states. And on and on. I haven't even begun to list the reasons why I like Kerry in particular (I'll leave that for another day).

But the real reason why I'm optimistic about Kerry is this report that indicates that the crucial interdimensional shape-shifting lizard caucus is having doubts about Bush.

Divide and conquer, folks.