Matt Yglesias and Noam Schieber discuss how Kerry needed to clear a big hurdle to overcome voters' assumptions that Democrats were "soft" on national security.
The problem is that voters don't remember the 1930s and 1940s when it was the Republicans who were party with an image problem on national security. Thus [in part] the nomination of Eisenhower in 1952.
More to the point, it's just sad that this is how serious issues of war and peace, and killing people here and abroad get discussed, in the language of whether you're man enough and tough enough to do it. The case against Vietnam and Iraq was not, and is not, that war is always wrong, or even some general conclusion on whether America should project its power abroad.
The case against both wars is that war was an ineffective instrument for achieving the stated and desired policy aims.
Posted by robe0419 at November 15, 2004 9:17 AM