The Change from 2000

Jacob Weisberg who I often go to for good moments in writing, in 2000 voted for Gore with this to say:

Jacob Weisberg, Chief Political Correspondent: Gore.

When the race was getting started, I said I expected to be annoyed by everything Gore did in the campaign and then vote for him anyway. He’s held up his end of the bargain, and I intend to hold up mine. As a politician, Gore is nearly talentless. As a president, however, I think he would be likely to build on Bill Clinton’s most important accomplishments, hewing to a path of fiscal responsibility while pursuing a measured federal activism that would help rebuild public trust in government. In some respects, I think Gore could be better than Clinton. He is more engaged by foreign policy and a more principled internationalist. Gore’s sophistication about environmental and technology issues is a significant plus. As for Bush, Christopher Hitchens summed up my view perfectly when he described him as “unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.” A Bush presidency might not be a disaster, but it would surely be an embarrassment.

This year:

Jacob Weisberg, Editor: Kerry

I remain totally unimpressed by John Kerry. Outside of his opposition to the death penalty, I’ve never seen him demonstrate any real political courage. His baby steps in the direction of reform liberalism during the 1990s were all followed by hasty retreats. His Senate vote against the 1991 Gulf War demonstrates an instinctive aversion to the use of American force, even when it’s clearly justified. Kerry’s major policy proposals in this campaign range from implausible to ill-conceived. He has no real idea what to do differently in Iraq. His health-care plan costs too much to be practical and conflicts with his commitment to reducing the deficit. At a personal level, he strikes me as the kind of windbag that can only emerge when a naturally pompous and self-regarding person marinates for two decades inside the U.S. Senate. If elected, Kerry would probably be a mediocre, unloved president on the order of Jimmy Carter. And I won’t have a second’s regret about voting for him. Kerry’s failings are minuscule when weighed against the massive damage to America’s standing in the world, our economic future, and our civic institutions that would likely result from a second Bush term.

I’m not nearly as critical of Kerry, though I’m happy to call him Liveshot, but this year, it just isn’t funny.