Willful Self-Deception

Josh Marshall says, "bring it on." He thinks the Dems are prepared to compete on national security.

They may be by November, but they aren't now. Kerry needs to formulate a policy fast. Otherwise they're finished. Thinking they're secure on national security just because Kerry won medals in Vietnam and Bush didn't fight is willful self-deception. It wasn't very long ago (just after 9/11) when Democrats themselves were expressing relief that Bush had beaten Gore.

Lee Harris argues today in the WSJ that the Dems still haven't found a sensible approach to foreign policy. Simple pacifism or following the UN represent political suicide and neo-isolationsim brings them rather uncomfortably close to the conservatism or skepticism of Pat Buchanan. They could, of course, wish we had stayed out of Iraq, but "decide to stay liberal," follow Joe Lieberman's lead, and acknowledge that pushing forward with Bush's plans for a more liberal world is now the only reasonable course of action for America

Bush may lose the election, but it likely won't be on national security/foreign policy -- unless the Dems adopt this last posture Harris outlines. So far they aren't showing indications that they will.