Hitchens backs Kerry!  


Well, actually, it turns out that Slate got it wrong. The piece that Hitchens wrote was so obtuse that they thought perhaps it was a Kerry endorsement. In a correction, they have now listed Hitchens as having no choice of candidate. Ah well...  

This has to be the most backhanded, obtuse endorsement I've ever read:

Christopher Hitchens, Contributor to Slate.com: Kerry

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. 

Posted: Tue - October 26, 2004 at 08:40 p.m.         | |

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