B E B E R E

I've been taking to reading Ann Althouse's blog a fair bit recently. I appreciate her conversational style and the hodgepodge of subject matter on her site ("Politics and the aversion to politics, law and law school, high and low culture, and the way things look from Madison, Wisconsin.").

It appears, as well, that she's picked up on a few things that I had been thinking about, too. The "wrong way" had gotten to me particularly (though not so much as the 'fraudulent coalition' implication and the 'Bush misled the American People' statement) because, up to this point, I've not heard of any substantive alternatives from Kerry. He mentioned "wrong way" several times - mentioned that there was a four point plan on his website, and let it go with that. (I looked at the website - more talk on the 'failure' of the Bush Administration, of 'building coalitions' so that 'everyone shares the burden...more about regaining America's
'credibility' in the world. Oh, and the Arab Summit.)

Bush's strong point was definately to drive home Kerry's 'habit' of changing sides for political expediency. What did he say that I thought was particularly powerful? "You can change tactics as you need to - but to be constantly changing your core values sends mixed messages?" Also, the emphasis on sovereignty over international consensus (getting France/Germany's/the UN's permission to defend ourselves? Good for the remark on not allowing bin Laden dictate how we defend ourselves. Kerry's line on the invasion of Iraq causing an upsurge in recruits for Al Qaida seemed to be a shallow and naive one. There was plenty of hatred in the Arab world for the Big Scapegoat before 9/11.)

Misleading the American People? Good for Bush to cite several Kerry quotes about the need for action against Saddam. Also - and this is so tiresome and has been debunked *so many times,* - why bring up the WMD and "imminent threat" as having been the reasons for the invasion?

I've been reading lots of interpretations of Bush's evident emotion in this debate. My take on it is very similar to the Instawife's. (And apparently a lot of others', too.)