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GREG DJEREJIAN,
www.belgraviadispatch.com:
One of the most important events in the campaign occurred in September
during the visit to the United States of Prime Minister Ayad
Allawi of
Until then, while I was leaning toward
In place of such statesmanship, however, Mr. Kerry chose to belittle Mr. Allawi.
Aside from playing right into the handbook of Iraqi insurgents by
reinforcing the notion that Mr. Allawi's government
was a quisling regime, Mr. Kerry's conduct signaled a lack of real interest
in Iraqi democratization. After all, Mr. Allawi
embodied the beginning of
ANA MARIE COX,
www.wonkette.com:
I was all set to vote for
MICKEY KAUS,
www.kausfiles.com:
Mr. Bush might also have pointed out that without the 1991 war, the inspection regime Mr. Kerry later valued so
highly wouldn't have been installed. And if we hadn't dismantled Saddam
Hussein's nuclear program in 1991, he might have been able to build the bomb.
(Mr. Bush finally brought up the 1991 vote in the third debate, but still
didn't make a big enough deal of it.)
I'm for John Kerry, but George Bush let him skate past his biggest
vulnerability and get back into the race.
LORIE BYRD,
www.polipundit.com:
An important event in the 2004 campaign was the Democratic convention. My
analysis of the convention, written just hours after it ended, still holds
true: "In addition to the mistake Kerry made by placing too much
emphasis on Vietnam, which will give extra importance to the opposition of
Kerry by vet groups, he also messed up by not addressing his two-decade-long
Senate record. Not only can Bush-Cheney now point out the record of votes
Kerry didn't take the opportunity to explain or defend, but they can show
that Kerry is trying to hide his Senate record."
The convention set the stage for the advertisements from the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth and the Bush-Cheney attack on Mr. Kerry's voting record.
The convention produced little momentum for Mr. Kerry, and it wasn't until
his strong debate performance on Sept. 30 that he finally got back into the
running. If he loses, much of the blame can be traced back to that one week
in July.
JOANNE JACOBS,
www.joannejacobs.com:
"The terrorists laughed at the suffering of children, who'd gone for
days without water, food or sleep, said a survivor of the Russian school
seized by what A.P. calls 'rebels.' "
That's how I started a Sept. 3 post on the Beslan
massacre that killed at least 331 hostages. On Sept. 14, I linked to an
Israeli newspaper article translated by another blogger
about a 74-year-old teacher who died with his students: "The terrorist
allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around
to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst."
The children wore bibs. The Beslan massacre was
a brutal reminder of the ruthlessness of 21st century terrorists. I'm into
nuance - till terrorists shoot fleeing children in the back. Then I want a
stubborn, single-minded president who's at war with evildoers. They're at war
with us.
ANN ALTHOUSE,
www.althouse.blogspot.com:
I'd grown used to waiting for
I wrote on my blog at the time, "If you
still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be
snapped at for 'not listening'?" After that, as I heard Mr. Kerry
wriggle his way around the Iraq question one way and then another, I never
forgot his willingness to blame the listener for not already seeing his answer,
and my mistrust of John Kerry hardened into support for George Bush.
J. BRADFORD DELONG,
www.j-bradford-delong.net:
Last winter a small group of moderate Republicans tried to dislodge Vice President
Dick Cheney from the ticket. Reporters for The National Journal found senior
Republicans trying to generate groundswells for Mr. Cheney's replacement by
former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York; Secretary of State Colin Powell;
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; the national security adviser,
Condoleezza Rice; or Bill Frist, the Senate
majority leader.
The hope, I think, was that with Mr. Cheney out of the picture, Mr. Powell
could then be the grand vizier for a "reality-based" security policy,
and somebody like the
In the 1980's the moderate Republicans tried and succeeded. In 2004 they
tried and failed. And with their failure died the chance to drag the Bush
administration out of incompetence and ideology.
KEVIN DRUM,
www.washingtonmonthly.com:
Four years ago, Vice President Al Gore bungled his first presidential
debate with
Mr. Bush, of all people, should have learned an obvious lesson from this:
don't treat
And John Kerry, who had been a steady six or seven percentage points
behind in the polls, suddenly closed to within two or three points. And then
kept gaining. And maybe even gained enough to win. All because Mr. Kerry
looked calm and presidential during the first debate while Mr. Bush looked
vaguely affronted at the mere idea of having to share a stage with him.
DAVID ADESNIK,
www.oxblog.com:
There was no single moment when
I don't hold it against George Bush that he was wrong about Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, since Bill Clinton and John Kerry were
just as wrong. But if Mr. Bush had been right about
JOHN HINDERAKER and SCOTT JOHNSON,
www.powerlineblog.com:
The most important event of the campaign was the exposure of documents
cited by "60 Minutes" in its report on
We posted our observations about the "60 Minutes" documents on
the morning of Sept. 9, the day after Dan Rather's
report was broadcast. We updated the posting through the day as new
information came in from readers. Within 12 hours, more than 500 other Web
sites had linked to ours, millions of people were aware of the serious
questions that had been raised about CBS's documents, and CBS News executives
were on the defensive.
When it became clear within a few days that the documents were indeed fake, it was widely recognized that journalism had changed
forever. Never again will the mainstream news media be able to dictate the
flow of information to the American people.
GLENN REYNOLDS,
www.instapundit.com:
The biggest story of this campaign was the candid admission in July by
Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, that the press
"wants Kerry to win." Though this seemed significant at the time,
it was only later - with things like CBS's bogus-document scandal, and the
attempted late hit about the alleged missing explosives - that it became
clear just how right Mr. Thomas was. Mr. Thomas has since suggested that
press bias is probably not as influential as he first thought, but it has
been abundantly clear that the press has been in the tank for Kerry/Edwards
for several months.
People have noticed. As I wrote in August: "Elections come and go,
politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be
disappointments one way or another. But the 'Fourth Estate' is a big part of
the unelected permanent government that in many ways does more to run the
country than the politicians. And it's unraveling before our very eyes, which
I think is the biggest story of the election so far." It still is.
TOM BURKA,
www.tomburka.com:
Even before he started his campaign in earnest this year,
"Bush misunderestimated the importance of
the 'Get me out of here' bloc," said Dr. Herb Flaggellum,
a former thyroid doctor-turned-pundit.
Exit polling will almost certainly show that in a sea of issues baffling
undecided voters, Mr. Bush's lack of commitment to expensive space
exploration was a deciding factor in the election today. That,
and his failure to wear a receiver and earpiece in the first debate.