Personal Asides: Message to Lawrence…It’s Been a Very Good Year

Lawrence.



My friend, you have all of us who read or correspond on this website at a disadvantage. People who write messages on Reader’s Comments sign their full names. You’re the only one who does not. Yet you say I know you or imagine I do. You seem to know a great deal about me but I haven’t a clue who you are. Therefore I would like to sit down with you so as to get your full bill of particulars so I may respond and share insights with you. You have a point of view and I’d like to hear you speak about it personally. Please leave your full name and where I can contact you on my personal email. Thanks.



2007: A Very Good Year.

The year 2007 was a very good year for conservatives. The reasons: First, the Iraq surge is working: the way you can tell is that its doleful reporting is not taking place on the drive-by media’s front pages or in broadcast news. The Democratic-led House voted 223-201 for massive troop withdrawal from Iraq but six days later the Democratic Senate rejected a similar bill allowing the surge to take place. I am confident George W. Bush will be cherished on a high, very high, plane in the sweep of history—higher than that of Harry Truman whose revision came more from sentimental liberal historians than from the fact when the loss of China, the Korean War caused by failure of Dean Acheson to include it in the perimeter of our defenses and the spectacular corruption in office of so many Truman appointees. The only saving grace was the Marshall Plan and aid to Greece and Turkey..



Second, the field of presidential candidates on the Republican side is insuperably better than on the Democratic. Just to list them with their experience shows the difference—John McCain who seems to have come into his own as the issues center on foreign and military policy. He seemingly alone said the surge would work and it has…Mitt Romney who has a proven skill of administrative leadership (maybe Frank Nofsinger is right that the best ticket would be McCain and Romney)….Rudy Giuliani is a flawed vessel but has the capacity for great leadership in a Republican administration…Duncan Hunter is a natural for secretary of defense. I don’t feel anything about Fred Thompson for or against which I think reflects the tepid response he has received after the huge buildup. About Ron Paul I respect him as a man of conviction but feel he is terribly out of step with the needs of the country. However the benefits of his campaign may well dominate New Hampshire and what follows in ways we don’t foresee now. The challenge is to work his angry, discomfited and sometimes bitterly divisive libertarians into the fiber of the Republican party.

Third, contrary to the death wishes of the media the economy has not tanked.

Fourth, contrary to the death wishes of the liberals, the destructive issue of embryonic stem cells has been resolved as the front page headline of “The New York Times” said: “Scientists bypass need for embryo to get stem cells.” The newspaper that had led the push to wrest stem cells from tiny humans, killing them in the process, led the way to negate the issue. Fifth, the Democratic Congress failed to make George W. Bush irrelevant, failed to defund and thus derail the war which would have been a national disgrace.

Fifth, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ban on partial birth abortion ratified the courage of George W. Bush in naming good people to the Court. Conservatives helped him immeasurably by opposing the nomination of Harriet Miers.

Only partially satisfactory were these items: the commutation of Scooter Libby’s 30-month prison sentence by the president who felt it “excessive.” I feel that Libby’s conviction was merited under a strict construction of the evidence and validated the prosecution by Patrick Fitzgerald. But the constitutional pardoning process was installed by the founders to instill mercy. Thus I feel the president has the right—indeed, I say, the duty—to pardon him totally before Bush leaves office.