Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Dirty socks
No, not the Boston RedSox... what does the Bush administration have in common with an old pair of smelly socks?
In honor of the World Series, a baseball metaphor to explain politics.
A surprising number of seemingly smart people say they are voting for Bush based on the following analysis of national security: the U.S. has not experienced a terrorist attack on home soil since 9/11, so Bush must be making the country safer!
Okay, ignoring the fact that Bush was president when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and had had several months to ignore terrorism as a pressing issue; and ignoring the fact that he has placed 180,000 American soldiers in a position to become targets of opportunity for terrorists in Iraq; and ignoring nuclear weapons programs in the other two countries making up the "axis of evil," and the administration's failure to secure nuclear material in Russia and explosives in Iraq...
Even before they started trying to associate the impending terrorist threat with the prospect of a Kerry presidency, the Bush administration has asserted that we are likely to be attacked again on home soil by terrorists, in spite of the administration's efforts. The attack is inevitable, they said, at least before the campaign heated up.
In that context, to say that the absence of a terrorist attack is attributable to something about the Bush administration making us safer than a Kerry administration, is like a ballplayer who refuses to change his socks so long as his team continues winning. It's superstition.
In honor of the World Series, a baseball metaphor to explain politics.
A surprising number of seemingly smart people say they are voting for Bush based on the following analysis of national security: the U.S. has not experienced a terrorist attack on home soil since 9/11, so Bush must be making the country safer!
Okay, ignoring the fact that Bush was president when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and had had several months to ignore terrorism as a pressing issue; and ignoring the fact that he has placed 180,000 American soldiers in a position to become targets of opportunity for terrorists in Iraq; and ignoring nuclear weapons programs in the other two countries making up the "axis of evil," and the administration's failure to secure nuclear material in Russia and explosives in Iraq...
Even before they started trying to associate the impending terrorist threat with the prospect of a Kerry presidency, the Bush administration has asserted that we are likely to be attacked again on home soil by terrorists, in spite of the administration's efforts. The attack is inevitable, they said, at least before the campaign heated up.
In that context, to say that the absence of a terrorist attack is attributable to something about the Bush administration making us safer than a Kerry administration, is like a ballplayer who refuses to change his socks so long as his team continues winning. It's superstition.
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