The Duke Reflects

I did not need to read this: Nearing 70, Mike Dukakis, now a professor, reflects on what he's learned.

Naturally, it is a quick article.

On foreign policy, he notes with some amusement: "I was accused in the '88 campaign of being a multilateralist, and they made it sound almost pornographic"; now, on issues involving Iraq and North Korea, "the guy in the White House is probably waking up to the fact that you need your allies."

Now let's think about this. Dukakis supported dramatic cuts in the US military, and end to much of its research, and a nuclear freeze. Now I will concede that the USSR was already headed down the toilet in 1988, but Iraq was rising. Its invasion of Kuwait was two years off, and it was about 3 years from a nuclear weapon.

What would "The Duke" have done? Would he assembled a coalition to protect Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait?

Or would he have fudged?

I say Dukakis would have pursued the UN route, crushing Saddam with the same sanctions that the dictator comfortably endured for 13 years. Maybe, if he were feeling brave, Dukakis would have sold some weapons to the worthless Saudi military so that they could defend themselves. It wouldn't take Saddam long to notice the weak, oil-rich nation just south of Kuwait.

The result? A nuclear-armed Saddam sitting on top of nearly half of the world's oil. Forget OPEC. We'd be dealing with Saddam. And he'd want more than money. He'd want revenge - particularly against Israel (for destroying his reactor at Osirak).

But The Duke^TM has a gift for making this scenario sound rosy!

"If he had won the presidency, he says, "I think we would have had universal health care by this time."

Oh yippee!

In my liberal past, I voted for this bum, but I thank God he lost the election now. Part of the silliness of the modern left can be traced to the fact that they have never done any similar soul searching: they have never examined the folly of nominating Michael Dukakis and said "what were we thinking?"

America has: Dukakis (and Mondale and Carter) are almost universally viewed as some kind of tired joke (Will Howard Dean join this parade of losers next?).

The left needs to realize it: Dukakis was not done in by some right wing conspiracy or by his own inabilty to respond to the charges against him.

His entire philosophy was rejected in 1988.

And the sound judgement of the electorate was vindicated by events in the world.

The Democrats simply refuse to believe that world is a dangerous place, but the clue phone keeps ringing.

Would somebody just get the phone already!


- posted by total @ 11/04/2003 12:00:00 PM .