Live from the convention

The annual convention of the American Political Science Association, that is. Traditionally held each year the four days before Labor Day, this year the convention was held in Chicago. I took a brief vacation to attend the panels sponsored by the Claremont Institute at the convention. (Click here for Ken Masugi’s account of the Institute’s participation in the convention proceedings.)
I attended the convention with my friend Bruce Sanborn, the chairman of the Claremont Institute. Although the urge to live blog the convention was strong, I resisted. I think it’s fair to say that it lacked the compelling story lines provided by the Republican convention in New York.
Probably the most well attended of the Institute’s panels this year was the roundtable on the neoconservative influence on American foreign policy. The roundtable was chaired by Mac Owens and included comments by Francis Fukayama, John O’Sullivan, Kenneth Weinstein and Thomas West. I rode over on the shuttle bus with Mac from our hotel to the Hilton where the Claremont panels were held that morning and chatted with him about the impact of the Swift boat veterans on the campaign.
Mac himself has been a principal in the underlying controversy, having written a February cover story for National Review focusing on Kerry’s April 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. (Mac led a Marine platoon in Vietnam from September 1968 to May 1969. He now teaches at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.)
In a May 3 article for National Review (only partially avalable online), Mac characterized Kerry’s antiwar activities as defaming his comrades by “Americanizing” Soviet propaganda. Mac has followed up on his National Review articles with columns for NRO (click here for a complete list). His most recent NRO column on the subject is “John Kerry’s two Vietnams.”
Unlike his February cover story, his most recent column generated an enormous response (discussed here). Mac said that he has returned to the subject in his columns for NRO because “people are listening now.” He promised at least one more column on the subject for NRO. In the meantime, catch up with Mac’s invaluable articles and columns on the fundamental internal contradiction of Kerryism.