Foreign Policy and Marriage

William Kristol thinks John Kerry needs to answer four questions in his acceptance speech this week. Three of them have to do with foreign policy -- Would he be willing to use force? Would Saddam still be in power if he had been president? Would Kerry pull out of Iraq? And one has to do with marraige -- Would Kerry re-define it?

On foreign policy, removing Saddam is looking more like a successful enterprise recently, and it is unlikely that Kerry will have a satisfactory answer to the second question. Republicans should pound him with it relentlessly.

On domestic matters, Republicans shouldn't be too afraid of alienating the undecided voters. People are looking for direction, and Republicans ought to be willing to give it to them by defending the traditional understanding of marriage reasonably. (Incidentally, none of the usual libertarian suspects in the blog world have bothered to comment about a recent piece in the Public Interest by Susan Shell making the liberal [yes, liberal, not religious] case against gay marriage.)