Great Moments in Dumb, 1 May 2003

Insty:

JUST WATCHED BUSH’S SPEECH FROM THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN: I’m not crazy about it. The speech was actually good, stressing the changes in warfare that technology has brought (“the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent” was a good line, and so was “men and women need liberty like they need food and air”), and the setting was fine: he was telling these guys what they’ve been fighting for, which is a President’s job. Overall, a better-than-average performance.

The jet-pilot arrival, on the other hand, rang false. The whole leader-who-flies-jets thing seems, somehow, Third World to me. People say that it’ll make great campaign footage in 2004, but I actually doubt it — or at least, I think it will backfire if they do too much of this. The President is commander-in-chief, but he’s a civilian leader, and Americans want him to be one.

Jarvis:

But I have to say that Bush and his team executed this war brilliantly. I have no problem saying that this was a right war to fight for a right cause and they fought it well. So I was impressed with Bush’s speech tonight on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln (more impressed, by the way, than Glenn Reynolds, who’s not as far right as many think but who’s surely to the right of me).

It was the speech of a leader. He did not gloat but he did show a firm and clear direction. There will be controversy over some things he said, of course. Yes, he all but linked Iraq to 9.11 but, you know, it’s not a far stretch in the minds of most Americans and for a reason: Looney fanatics from over there who hate us are birds of a feather. And there was a time in my life when I would have found the idea of smarter bombs to be distasteful, but now that I see the necessity of a war like this, even as I mourn the lives that are lost, I’m thankful for those that are not.

I’m still a liberal. I’m still not a Bushy. But give the man his due: He won the war against Iraq; right won the war against wrong. Well done.

Insty:

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, Jeff Jarvis thinks I’m wrong, too. Well, hell, maybe I am.