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9.29.04
Just
34 Days To Go:
The Debates, Iraq, Hitchens, and Lie Detector Tests
By Mark Grueter
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The first thing to insist about Thursday’s debate between George Bush and John Kerry is that it will not be a debate. According to the New York Times, the two candidates are not allowed to talk to each other while “debating,” from which of course follows that they cannot possibly engage in debate. Bush demanded this peculiar stipulation as a prerequisite for his participation. So the “events” will be more akin to a joint Q and A session where - and this adds a nice touch - the questions themselves are fixed ahead of time.
The rules for the debates were established by representatives of the candidates themselves. Team Bush, stubborn and bratty as always, issued a list of demands to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the bipartisan organization that mediates the negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. By threatening not to participate unless the commission met his requests, Bush got almost all of what he wanted (He had told the commission to make sure that television cameras not span over to him while Kerry was speaking. The CPD responded that they were sorry but that they had no control over such things. Ass).
John Kerry is complicit in this national disgrace - both candidates gave a 32-page report to the CPD and to the journalists participating in each event, consisting of the “rules” for each debate. They asked all parties to sign the report, thereby agreeing to abide by the rules or else face prosecution. The Times reports that, though journalists and commission members refused to actually sign the contract, they did essentially agree to abide by everything in it, which makes their gesture of defiance almost meaningless.
To call all this undemocratic and pathetic is to run the risk of stating the obvious. The corruption of the American election is so pervasive that it seems boring and insipid to point it out. But there you have it, on a platter surrounded by watercress. Incidentally, I don’t know why the two parties were so hell-bent on keeping Nader out of their debates. I mean, given the fact that the independent candidate would not have been able to ask his opponents questions, it’s hard to see where how he could’ve gained ground.
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Another New York Times story reports on the latest round of prewar intelligence that was reviewed and subsequently dismissed by the Bush administration. In January 2003, it seems, the National Intelligence Council estimated that the invasion “would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict.” The report also said an invasion would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives. A “best-case” scenario predicted instability through 2005. Now the report has proved prescient and Bush, yet again, has been proven wrong. But of course the Bush team will never express regret. Surely, that would be an unmanly sign of weakness, or, worse yet, of flip-flopping.
William Saletan of Slate, who I normally don’t find interesting, sums up Bush’s sinister approach to PR rather perfectly in “Catastrophic Success,” posted on Tuesday night. Essentially – again I run the risk of tautology - he notes that bad news is always interpreted and spun as good news, with a tricky, yet simple inversion. Anyway, it’s one of those pieces you might keep in your back pocket.
The Bush administration seems to exist in a fantasy world, where almost nothing they say corresponds with what is actually happening on the ground. P.G. Wodehouse once said of a certain, vaguely worded passage of William Shakespeare’s: “Sounds nice but doesn’t mean anything.” Same can be said, wouldn’t you say, for much of Bush’s and the neoconservatives’ lofty, platitudinous rhetoric about spreading freedom and democracy.
Not to be outdone, John Kerry quite plainly contradicts himself almost daily. He says, knowing what he knows now, he still would have authorized the use of force in Iraq, but then says it was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place (or something needlessly convoluted like that). Oh, but the Senator from Massachusetts is a nuanced, sophisticated thinker (plus “we” must defeat Bush) and so he should be forgiven.
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Christopher Hitchens, again on Slate, lashes Democrats who cynically hope that things go badly in Iraq, thus boosting John Kerry. But why would any Democrat need to hope for things to go badly in Iraq, when they already are going badly? The point is moot, I should think.
Citing Teresa Heinz Kerry’s comment that she wouldn’t be surprised if bin Laden were “caught” right before the election (implication of sinister plottings on Bush’s part clear), Hitchens excoriates the woman for “dicking around” with such “stupid” theories. But who really cares what Mrs. Kerry thinks (or even any of the other top level Democrats who Hitchens suspects of sharing Mrs. Kerry’s view)? Obviously, if Bush had caught OBL back in May, he wouldn’t have waited until now to drag the guy out, because it wouldn’t have made sense politically and it would’ve been difficult from a logistical angle, covering it up and such. So it is a dumb theory because of those two reasons and not because, as Hitchens argues, George W. Bush is simply too ethical or too patriotic a man to contemplate such nimble spadework. To imagine Bush or any other American president incapable of considering such an odious stunt is to have neglected reading Hitchens’ critiques of American power for the last 20 years. It is also an occasion of mistaking the unlikely with the impossible. Regardless, what matters is what Kerry and Edwards think and say, not their wives.
Mr. Hitchens, why shouldn’t liberals feel free to speculate or to dick around with possible scenarios? Yes, these are serious times requiring serious thought, which is exactly why people should be debating and discussing issues as openly and as freely as possible without fear of intimidation or of being accused of lacking patriotism. If George Bush is not required to meet the standards of academic discourse, why should the wife of his challenger be required to do so, never mind, everyday, powerless Democrats? (One is at a loss to understand, by the way, why Hitchens no longer writes pieces critical of Republicans, along with the Democrats he abuses).
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Finally, why not make the president, and all aspiring candidates, take lie detector tests? If they’re good enough for the FBI, aren’t they good enough for the White House? Hook the bastards up and ask them all those questions they refuse to answer publicly. No cheap shots, just information the public deserves to know. I have taken the opportunity to assemble just a few questions that could be fielded, and I’m sure the experts would rephrase them to make sure there could be no weaseling. Perhaps these could be debate questions too?
First, to Kerry: “Senator Kerry, on two public occasions, ten and twenty years after the Vietnam War respectively, you said that you were in Cambodia in 1968? Is that true? And if so, what were the circumstances?
Next to President Bush, “Sir, have you ever used cocaine and if yes, when was the last time?”
And my favorite one would go to former President Clinton: “Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who had been working on your campaign for attorney general of Arkansas at the time (you do remember Miss Broaddrick, don’t you Mr. President?), alleges you raped her in a Hotel Room in 1979. Is there any truth to this charge?”
That’s just a warm up of course. Now, I know this may turn out to be an unsound idea but it’s late goddamnit and I’m just trying to figure out ways to penetrate the barrier between government and the public it pretends to represent. Maybe by dicking around one of these nights, someone will imagine a better way.
Grueter's column on the presidential election runs every Wednesday.
Click here to see last week's column.
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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted at grueter@methree.net.
© 2004 Me Three