Over the weekend, I suggested that Dean, Kerry, Murtha et al. are leading the Democrats off a cliff in the cartoon tradition of Wile E. Coyote. (My apologies to the many readers who pointed out how unfair this comparison is to the coyote.) This morning, John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics sounds the same theme; only he analogizes the current political scene to Charlie Brown and the football:
[T]the Democrats still do not grasp that foreign affairs and national security issues are their vulnerabilities, not their strengths. All of the drumbeat about Iraq, spying, and torture that the left thinks is so damaging to the White House are actually positives for the President and Republicans. Apparently, Democrats still have not fully grasped that the public has profound and long-standing concerns about their ability to defend the nation.
The public resents the overkill from Abu Ghraib and the hand-wringing over whether captured terrorists down in Gitmo may have been mistreated. They want Kahlid Mohamed, one of the master minds of 9/11 and a top bin Laden lieutanent, to be water-boarded if our agents on the ground think that is what necessary to get the intel we need. They want the CIA to be aggressively rounding up potential terrorists worldwide and keeping them in black sites in Romania or Poland or wherever, because the public would rather have suspected terrorists locked away in secret prisons in Bulgaria than plotting to kill Americans in Florida or California or New York.
One of the major problems working against Democrats is many on their side appear to be rooting for failure in Iraq and publicly ridicule the idea that we actually might win. When this impression is put in context of the debate over eavesdropping or the Patriot Act, Democrats run the significant risk of being perceived to be more concerned with the enemys rights than protecting ordinary Americans. This is a loser for Democrats.
If Democrats want to make this spying outrage a page one story they are fools walking right into a trap. Now that this story is out and the security damage is already done, lets have a full investigation into exactly who the President spied on and why. Lets also find out who leaked this highly classified information and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.
It’s good to see others joining in our call to send the intelligence agency leakers to jail.
UPDATE: Reader Stephen Fossati writes:
For the better part of ten years I had the privilege of working closely with Wile’s creator Chuck Jones and in fact produced and co-wrote Chuck’s final Roadrunner cartoon in 1994, so I would humbly offer that I am a fair authority on said erstwhile coyote.
Having spoken with Chuck about Wile more times than I can count, I can say with great conviction that your suggestion that the Murtha, Dean, Kerry, Boxer et al, position with regards to the GWOT and the war in Iraq, is appropriately analogous to Wile and to his inumerable, ill-considered and near fatally-flawed plans to catch the Roadrunner — a good many of which resulted in him falling off of a cliff.
Chuck defined Wile in the words of George Santayana who said: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” Assuming that the Dems’ aims are to regain control of the House, the Senate and the White House and based upon their seemingly fevered attempts to discredit President Bush by mis-representing the success of the war, advocating for our withdrawal/surrender, and purposefully undermining our efforts/abilities to wage war on an enemy unlike any we have faced before, I think it’s fair to say that the Democrats clearly meet Santayana’s definition of a fanatic. And since it is Santayana’s definition of a fanatic with which Wile’s own creator described him, I would conclude that your comparison of our luckless, over-zealous and too-clever-by-half coyote to the leaders of the Democratic party, is not only correct but painfully (for the Dems), astute.
It’s interesting that Wile E. Coyote’s creator viewed him in such philosophical terms. Meanwhile, another point of similarity between Wile and the Democrats occurs to me. Remember how Wile viewed even his misadventures as evidence of his superior intellect?
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.