(reprint)
To the Victor…

Proving once again, that the Op/Ed page at the “Old Gray Lady” is open to any liberal with an agenda and a community college degree, Maureen Dowd’s latest vitriol lives up to all expectation. In her latest screed, Maureen mourns the failure of the Bush administration to surround itself with naysayers. As proof, Dowd openly laments that there is no one to openly disagree with administration policies on Iraq. Obviously ignoring that the role has been played with particular aplomb by the whole of the media, who pompously tout themselves as the “fourth estate” of our Federal Government. Yet somehow she decries the lack of presidential confidants with the secular gift of exhortation.

So Maureen’s biggest complaint is that President Bush chooses people without her particular Manhattan sensibilities for his cabinet posts. And though one wonders why this same criticism wasn’t given to the likes of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton … Oh, wait, that’s right, Maureen Dowd was a sports reporter then.

My point is that while she decries the fact that no one in the Bush administration is representing her liberal worldview on matters of state (I myself typically only consult liberals on foreign film directors or what prescription drug goes best with Chianti) but she ignores two realities – one obvious, the other even more obvious.

Reality number one – we won! Do the liberals who spent so much time reminding us about the popular vote after the 2000 election really expect the President to adopt the worldview of the minority of America (see Red States v. Blue States).

Reality number two – liberals suck at foreign policy. Oh, I know, you’ll harken back to the days of old when liberal icons like JFK booked foreign policy triumphs the way that Clinton booked interns. But I would remind these glossy-eyed liberals that JFK hardly fits the mold of today’s liberal and many of his foreign policy victories are simply the undoing of the mess he himself made (see Bay of Pigs). From the hostage crisis to North Korea, I am at a loss to find one example of lasting peace brought about by the liberal approach to foreign policy. Yet, recent history is replete with examples of successes cheerfully brought to you from the “dark side”.

One needs not look any further than the Cold War to see the perfect example of why liberals are inept at foreign policy. While former president and full-time idiot Jimmy Carter’s answer to the Soviet threat was “mutually assured destruction” – didn’t that make everyone feel better at night, Reagan had a different philosophy – beat them. And he did. The addle-mindedness of living the uneasy peace of a Soviet stalemate was not the hallmark of great leadership, but identifying and eliminating the growing threat was.

Enter Maureen Dowd, newly minted foreign policy expert, fresh from the City Page at the Times. Ms. Dowd cannot fathom why President Bush, wouldn’t reach out to the liberal establishment for counsel – given their myriad of success in the last four decades (that’s irony for you folks with liberal arts degrees).

It seems to me that when you boil down this argument it goes something like this: “The President doesn’t have anyone from Bel-Air, Manhattan, or The Bay Area informing his policy decisions. That’s not rule by consensus and that’s just wrong.” No, Maureen, not if you have reason, based on history, not to respect the opinions of those in the minority.

If the foreign policy geniuses on the left could take the time to look up from their skim-milk lattes and tantric sex articles in the Village Voice, they’d notice one peculiar fact. We are WINNING this war. The reason Osama Bin Laden sent a videotape this week is because he couldn’t send a bomb. Does anyone with a pulse really believe that if he could have sent a bomb he wouldn’t have? Ask the people of Madrid.

Whether President Bush builds his cabinet by nepotism, cronyism or mysticism (see Nancy Reagan) it is the cabinet that he was authorized to build by the majority of American voters. And his refusal to insert a representative from the party of foreign policy failure is not just wise … it’s a mandate.