Reelect Bush 

If I were forced into a voting booth at gunpoint and ordered to choose between George W. Bush and John Kerry, I suppose I would, with the utmost reluctance, perhaps with tears streaming down my face, choose Bush. (I’m positing that I was forbidden to write my own name in.)

This is not, you understand, because I have the slightest regard for our War President. In moments when I allow all refinement to slip, in the company of close friends, I am all too apt to call him a vulgar name. I won’t repeat it here, chiefly because I don’t want to offend my polite readers, but also because it would dishonor a necessary part of the alimentary canal.

It’s a common but curious insult. If dogs understood English, they would be puzzled by human quarrels, in which this word is bandied so carelessly. Our canine friends see nothing wrong with this part of the anatomy, as witness their amiable mutual sniffing upon first making acquaintance.

So — to return, none too soon, to our subject — why would I think of voting for Bush? Well, let me stress that it would have to be while looking at the muzzle of a gun. With that understanding, let me try to explain.

In a sense I wouldn’t be voting for Bush himself. But all things considered, I’d rather this country were dominated by the sort of people who prefer Bush to Kerry, however deludedly, than by the sort of people who prefer Kerry. I have many liberal friends, and they are personally likeable, but they instinctively prefer the kind of government we now have to the kind of government Thomas Jefferson had in mind. Conservatives have a residual affection for the Jeffersonian.

So why do conservatives vote for Bush? Good question. Many of them will admit they are troubled by Bush’s expansion of the Federal Government, his compromises with liberalism, and his psychotic spending, but they hope he’ll get over it. Most of them have also been intoxicated by his patriotic warrior posture, but I hope they’ll get over it.

The curious identification of conservatism with warfare — the most destructive and least conservative of government activities — is something fairly new. It was liberals — Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson — who led the United States into the great wars of the last century; conservatives used to oppose such military crusading and were damned as “isolationists” for adhering to the prudence of the Founding Fathers.

Bush’s Iraq war is now starting to appear as the folly it was. The recent bombings in Madrid have shown that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the terrorist network and overthrowing him did nothing to stop it. Bush utterly wasted two years, and untold resources, misdirecting American wrath toward the wrong target.

Europeans understood this all along; it may yet sink in with Americans. On this, liberals have been more sensible than conservatives. The space probe is as likely to find Saddam’s fabulous “weapons of mass destruction” on Mars as Bush is to find them in Iraq.

Bush still thinks his “leadership” against Iraq will be his great asset in winning him reelection; it ought to make him look like a bloody buffoon. If I were in his place, I’d avoid mentioning Iraq from now until November, for fear of provoking bitter laughter.

So Bush richly deserves to lose this year’s election. His presidency has been a ghastly failure on its own chosen terms. But that doesn’t mean that Kerry deserves to win.

Not that a Kerry presidency is much to be dreaded. Whoever wins in 2004 will have to deal with the colossal mess Bush has made. There will be little money to pay for ambitious new Federal projects and programs. It would almost serve Bush right to have to clean up his own Augean stables.

Meanwhile, there will be more terrorist attacks, very possibly in this country. Madrid has found that these won’t require suicide bombers, airplanes, or “weapons of mass destruction.” They can be accomplished with small explosives set off by remote control, which are very hard to prevent.

By fighting the wrong enemy, Bush has only alienated America’s friends. Every new terrorist attack will only underline his failure. This is the record he must run on. Let’s cross our fingers and hope he wins.

Joseph Sobran