Not the same

Try to follow the bizarre logic of this statement by The New York Times' David E. Sanger:

But both Mr. Bush's speech and Mr. Kerry's retort were notable for what they both omitted: any discussion of a strategy for either defeating the insurgency or disengaging from it. Some of Mr. Kerry's advisers have been urging him to describe a plan in more detail, which they say he hopes to do soon ...

Kerry's "retort" -- which Sanger does not take issue with because it's, well, true -- was this:

"But you and I know, Americans know and the world knows -- because all you have to do is see it on the evening news or read it in the newspaper -- that the situation in Iraq is worse, not better," Mr. Kerry said, alluding to the string of heavy casualties in recent days. "That whole parts of Iraq are in control of terrorists, or jihadists and insurgents, that weren't before. That our troops are overextended, our National Guard and Reserve troops are overextended, and this president has not done what is necessary to fight the most effective war on terror."

Mr. Kerry said the Iraq war was "the most catastrophic choice that George Bush made," and he lambasted the president as choosing "to go it alone" in the initial invasion in March 2003, to ignore Congress and his own generals, and "to rush to war without a plan to win the peace."

So here then is Sanger's proposition:

1. George W. Bush has created a colossal, deadly, terrorist-breeding mess and a no-win situation by neglecting to have a plan for post-invasion Iraq and botching nearly every decision in the last 18 months.

2. John Kerry has not yet presented a detailed, step-by-step plan for quickly and easily cleaning up Bush's mess.

3. These two things are equivalent.

This is insane. And Sanger isn't the only reporter repeating this screwball notion. The same thing occurs regularly in discussions of the deficit:

George W. Bush has run up the largest deficit in American history -- a structural, ongoing shortfall that will escalate and expand over time. But, hey, John Kerry doesn't have a magic plan for restoring balanced budgets either. So they're both the same, right?

By this screwy logic, a doctor who fails to save a DOA gunshot victim would be just as guilty as the shooter in the patient's death.

When John Kerry takes office in January he will inherit a series of extremely difficult tasks. Undoing the damage George W. Bush has done to America will demand exceptional skill, wisdom and good fortune. The man is going to have to work miracles just to keep the downward spirals Bush has set in motion from getting even worse.

It's perfectly reasonable to demand that John Kerry appreciates the seriousness and the scope of the mess he will be inheriting. And it is reasonable to ask for details on how he intends to undertake the Herculean tasks of restoring fiscal sanity and salvaging Iraq from chaos. But for heaven's sake, let's have a little sense of perspective. The lack of a final draft of a detailed clean up plan is not the same as being responsible for creating the mess while -- even now, still -- pretending it doesn't even exist.

Comments

[J Mann]

I didn't read the quote above as saying that Bush and Kerry were equivalent, just that it was notable that neither one of them has a concrete plan for improving the situation.

Kerry's strategy on Iraq, education, the deficit and some of the other tricky issues is to largely say "I'm smarter than Bush, and the problems are his fault anyway, so I'll probably do better."

I grant that that's a compelling argument to about 30% of the electorate, and that 30% on the other side won't move no matter how good Kerry's plan is. The 40% in the middle, however, might want to hear some specifics before they change (or make up) their minds.

[Alan]

A year or so ago, I read a brilliant illustration of the absurdity of demanding a plan from a challenger (now Kerry) while not holding Bush responsible for making the mess in the first place. It was in the form of the right hand and the left hand arguing about shooting oneself in the foot. The right hand wants to do it, has no really good argument for doing so, but thinks it's probably a good idea. The left hand is freaked out, says it's the dumbest thing in the world, asks the right hand what it will do after the shooting. Right hand carries on, calls the left hand a pansy, while the left hand is still demanding some kind of reason and some kind of plan.

Ultimately, the right hand ignores all the arguments, shoots itself in the foot--causing all sorts of horrible damage--and then hands the gun over to the left hand, and says, "Okay, genious, now what's your plan?"

I wish I could find the original comment. I think it was in the form of a blog comment somewhere.

[Beth]

It's funny, but we've got a very similar situation here in my hometown surrounding the upcoming city fire chief election. Normally people don't pay much attention to fire chief elections, but this year, with a forest fire raging out of control just outside of town, it's a big deal. See, we were having some problems with tourists dropping lit matches in the woods. When a someone suggested that there might be tourists smoking a few miles north of us, the fire chief immediately started setting backfires to contain the threat. It looks like he didn't do a very good job of it though, because the backfires raged out of control and now they threaten to engulf surrounding communities. The fire's gotten so big that our fire department is barely able to contain it, much less put it out any time soon.

So, it's a tough decision. Some people say we've got to get that fire bug out of office, but the way I see it, neither candidate has a quick solution so why not stick with the chief we've got?

[Karmakin]

It seems to me, that Kerry is playing PAST November of course. The problem isn't that he isn't serious on these issues, the problem is that he's too serious.

When he takes office, he's going to have a bunch of very serious problems to take care of. Sure, he could make wide sweeping promises without knowing the way things are going to be in January, but then he's handcuffed to them.

What he's doing now, is that he's keeping a pretty clean slate. Meaning that he'll have maximum room to manuvere come the battles of the next few years. There are other factors as well, how much of a mandate he has, and the political hand he's dealt. Will the GOP retain both sides of Congress or what? Nobody really knows.

Then you have Iraq, which is a constantly devolving situation, nobody knows exactly HOW bad it will be.

Sure, I guess Kerry could give suggestions for the here and now, but immature Republicans will try to hold those suggestions to the future.

You just can't deal with these guys.

"No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?"
-- Thomas Sowell

[kodi]

I don't think it's that any large portion of the electorate think that there is no difference between screwing up and failing to fix someone else's screwup. Most of the Bush voters I know believe that the reason the economy is so bad is because Clinton screwed it up, and the reason Iraq is so bad is because Clinton screwed it up, and the reason bin Laden was Determined to Attack in United States is because Clinton screwed it up.

I understand that there are counterarguments to all of these things, and I find the counterarguments compelling. My point, I guess, is that Bush voters do not frame the argument as "Bush screwed it up, but nobody knows better how to fix it."

[anon]

Fred, your points about Sanger don't make any better sense to me than his do to you. In extreme shorthand, it seems like your beef is this:

1. Bush screwed up in the past.

does not equal

2. Kerry's plan to fix it lacks depth.

The logic may not parse, but the case Kerry is trying to make has got to be based not on how Bush screwed up past tense, but how staying the course will be still more dangerous. The electorate has an amazing ability to hold its nose and pull the lever (viz. 2 Clinton terms). I don't see how Kerry can convince people to go with him instead of Bush without fleshing out his plan. I care who made the mess, but I care more about someone coming forward with a plausible plan to clean it up. Stability first, then we can hold the hearings and find scapegoats. No plan, no vote.