Friday, October 29, 2004

Hitch Endorses... Someone

To respond to posts by Dan Drezner and Jim Lindgren, I think Hitchens is still voting for Bush. If Bush should be re-elected based on a "subjective" calculation, what more is there? Do people vote "objectively"?

It IS, however, ironic for El Hitcho to criticize Kerry for flip-flopping in what must be the most tortuously muddled and indecisive "endorsement" ever:
______

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.

The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan's anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry's pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can't compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.
_____

All one cay say is, "What the hell...?"