19 Tuesday Oct 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
What, George W. Bush’s record in office hasn’t given John Kerry enough to work with? Instead, the Democrat prefers to run against demons he himself has conjured? The Kerry campaign’s grip on reality, which it seized with tenacity during the first debate, by the close of the third had become tenuous once again.
12 Tuesday Oct 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
You could have knocked me over with a feather, but what was George W. Bush’s best moment in the town hall debate on Friday? Why, his answer to the question on taxpayer funding of abortion, that’s what.
05 Tuesday Oct 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
Last week, John Kerry figured out that he would like to be president of the United States in 2005. At long last, we have two candidates who are competing for that office. And a pretty close race it is.
01 Friday Oct 2004
Posted in Policy Review
View this article at Policy Review, October/Novemeber 2004
This essay appears in slightly different form in Peter Berkowitz, ed., Varieties of Conservatism in America (Hoover Institution Press, 2004).
“Neoconservatism” is the name of a robust strain in American intellectual life and American politics, a strain with a very rich history. But although even some of its leading figures over the years have pronounced the end of neoconservatism usually on grounds of its merger with (or perhaps takeover of) the conservative mainstream, the term remains very much alive. This is especially true when used to describe a certain group of people who have sought to influence American public policy, most notably foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, and who, in the administration of George W. Bush, obtained that influence.
One might, therefore, begin a consideration of neoconservatism with its rich history — or, in the alternative, with its contemporary influence. I propose to do neither (though I will indeed touch upon the past and the present). Instead, I want to explore its future — specifically, the ways in which neoconservatism has evolved according to its own premises in the direction of a current and future politics dedicated to the preservation and extension of liberal order, properly understood. To get to neoconservatism’s liberal legacy, however, it is necessary to begin with liberalism’s origins in the nature of politics itself.
28 Tuesday Sep 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The head of Iraq’s nuclear research program has spoken. Mahdi Obeidi, writing on the op-ed page of the New York Times Sunday, offers an insider account of what was going on in Iraq in the years before the U.S.-led invasion. In the absence of any compelling reason to doubt his credibility, what he says seems to offer the best answer so far to a truly vexing question: What was Saddam Hussein thinking?
21 Tuesday Sep 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
My frequent NPR sparring partner E.J. Dionne had a very interesting column in The Washington Post on Friday, one that took up the case of his neoconservative friends, among whom I count myself.
14 Tuesday Sep 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
The presidential election is a mess. Granted, it is a mess in favor of the incumbent, and George W. Bush’s contribution to the mess pales in comparison to that of the John Kerry campaign. But it is a mess just the same, one likely to yield an outcome well short of optimal, even if my guy wins (or for that matter, if yours does).
07 Tuesday Sep 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
There was a time when Democrats were better at the craft of politics than Republicans. Given the dominance of congressional Democrats for the 40-year period from 1954 forward and the overall policy impact of FDR’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, Democrats certainly knew what they were doing. But those days are gone, and against all expectations, it is the Republican Party that is better at politics nowadays.
31 Tuesday Aug 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
I had a conversation a couple months ago with a colleague, a political scientist, in which we were comparing notes on the presidential election. These were not George W. Bush’s best days. Nevertheless, he noted, every model that political scientists use to predict the outcome of presidential elections pointed to a Bush victory, based on the strength of the economy. There was one potential anomaly, and that was the wartime character of the Bush re-election bid.
24 Tuesday Aug 2004
Posted in Washington Times
The Washington Times
There are two possibilities: Either the Kerry campaign actually believes that the Bush campaign is behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; or the Kerry campaign just thinks it’s good politics to blame President Bush personally for the Vietnam veterans who served in proximity to Mr. Kerry and have decided he is “unfit” to be commander in chief. The question, then, is which of these two views is the dumber?
Tod Lindberg 