McPheet.com

The SwiftVets story seems to be picking up some steam, getting coverage
in the mainstream media.  I still don’t think this story will have
enough legs to carry it into November.

There’s a lot of silliness involved. Today, Ex-Senator Max Cleland (D-GA)
flew to the President’s ranch with
a letter
(.PDF) signed by himself and several other Senators.  (The Senators,
some of whom have combat experience, are all Democrats, a data point CNN
gets wrong in

this story.)  The President, who was at the ranch, declined to
receive Senator Cleland, instead sending out Texas Land Commissioner Jerry
Patterson to take the letter and
deliver
one of his own.

(That’s quite the dis, isn’t it — the President not only doesn’t meet
Cleland, but he sends out someone who’s not even a Federal employee, but a
Texas state official.)

This
is all childish stuff: Kerry saying, in effect, "Tell your friends to quit
picking on me." and Bush saying, "You started it."  But it’s all part
of the game.  Paul F. Boller, Jr, in his book

Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush,
relates that in the first really contested election, Adams vs. Jefferson,
1796, the Federalists backing Adams "called Jefferson an atheist, anarchist,
demagogue, coward, mountebank, trickster, and Franco-maniac, and said that
his followers were ‘cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and
vermin.’ "

(By the way, the book is pretty funny, and a great little capsule history
of more than 200 years of campaigns.  Click on the picture of the book
to buy it at Amazon.com.)

A couple more points:

• John Kerry’s service in VietNam would be pretty irrelevant, were it not
  for the fact that he spends so much time telling you he served in VietNam.
  In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he mentioned
  his war service (which was a total of four months in VietNam) five separate
  times in a speech that lasted about 45 minutes.
• The Kerry campaign is pretty bent out of shape about alleged Bush
  connections with SwiftVets, to the point that he’s filed a complaint with
  the Federal Election Commission.  The law says that these groups,
  called 527s because of the section of the law that deals with them, can run
  ads as long as there is no coordination between them and the candidate’s
  campaign.  (Indeed, two people connected with the Bush campaign has
  resigned because they have also connections to SwiftVets.) However,
  Blogs
  for Bush shows this graphic outlining some of the connections between
  the Kerry campaign and some anti-Bush 527s.  I’d still prefer John
  McCain to George Bush, but McCain-Feingold was and continues to be a bad
  law.
• Adiemantus has a
  great
  piece on how John Kerry has broken an unwritten truce to which Americans
  had come on the the topic of VietNam, and why, therefore, he deserves all
  the flak he’s taking on this issue.

• John Kerry vs. SwiftVets. Take a look at this
  ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for
  Truth (SwiftVets). When I first saw it, I thought it was pretty
  damaging.  And the Kerry Campaign’s first response was to
  threaten
  to sue television station managers who air the ad. (The money quote:
  "…your station is responsible for the false and libelous charges made…")
  The SwiftVets have struck back with their own
  
  letter to station managers, with over two dozen exhibits that document
  the various claims made in the ad.

  I am not convinced this will be a big deal in November.  This story
  might well blow over by then, especially if you believe in the
  Feiler Faster Thesis. 
  There are far too many news cycles between now and November.  And
  that’s even if you exclude the possibility of news from Iraq or Afghanistan
  or somewhere else that could throw the whole election off track.
   

• I don’t like John Kerry. I watched very little of the Democratic
  National Convention this year.  (Do any of you even remember the
  convention?  See what I mean about the Feiler Faster Thesis?  It
  seems like ancient history.)  Really, the only part I watched was
  Kerry’s acceptance speech, which I thought was really awful.  He talked
  right through all the applause lines.  He started with a bunch of
  biographical stuff that was punctuated with bad jokes ("I was born in the
  West Wing!"). He spent a lot of time in the middle thanking people ("And
  what can I say about Teresa!"), as if he’d just won an Oscar. He tried to
  have it both ways in Iraq and the military. And his big chant / slogan
  turned out to be "America can do better, and help is on the way," which
  doesn’t really say very much.  His campaign seems to center on two
  items: he fought in Viet Nam, and He’s not George Bush. 

  I don’t like George Bush, either. The President has done some things
  that really bother me in the last three-and-a-half years.  I’ve never
  believed in his faith-based initiatives. (I don’t want to see faith-based
  charitable organizations become dependent on government money.) He doesn’t appear to have done much
  to shrink the size of government; in fact, his prescription drug benefit
  program is a huge increase in government. His administration has not
  committed to
  doing what
  I think is necessary to secure Iraq as a peaceful, democratic nation.
  And the premise that
  even Americans can be declared enemy combatants and detained without contact
  with a lawyer scares the tar out of me. Even if you believe in Mr.
  Bush’s essential goodness, putting that kind of power in the hands of the
  Executive is dangerous.  It’s also quite likely unConstitutional.
   

• McCain-Feingold is a lousy law.  Really big bucks are going
  to be spent this year by organizations like SwiftVets and
  MoveOn.org, which skirt the edges of the
  McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms.  My reform plan, which is
  much simpler, is as follows. 

  1.) Anyone can give as much money as they want to candidates or parties, but
  their contributions must be listed on the websites of the candidate or
  party.  Full and immediate disclosure of campaign contributions of any
  kind.

  2.) Only individuals can make political contributions, not organizations.
  Corporations may be "legal persons," but they should not have the same free
  speech rights as real people. No more campaign ads by unions, industry
  groups, corporations, political action committees, etc.

Back in January, I got a phone call.  Someone had found

my resume on Gamasutra.com, a
game-industry website.  I was surprised; it had been two and a half
years since I left Microsoft, and I didn’t expect to ever work in games
again.  We did the phone interview thing, then the in-person interview
thing (they even flew Amy up with me), and then they offered me a job. 
In Canada.  (On Vancouver Island, to be precise.)

At first glance, Canada looks a lot like America.  So much so that
in some ways it’s much harder than moving to, say, Saudi Arabia.  You
expect everything to be different there.  But here in Canada, the
subtle differences sneak up on you, and the surprise throws you for a loop.

We had some tough times making the adjustment, but we’re
finally settling in okay.  Especially fun for a student of politics was
the federal election on June 28.  I loved having a ringside seat at a national
election outside the U.S., and, since the Liberal Party came out with only a
minority government, there’s a good chance I’ll get to watch the show again
within the year.

Pretty much everyone in Canada has been nice as pie to us, but it’s
interesting to get a chance to see what people think of the U.S. from
outside.

Right
after we moved up, Amy bought me a humorous little book called How to Be
a Canadian. It’s pretty funny.  And it explains something
interesting about Canadians.

"This sophisticated sense of self-identity (namely, that as Canadians,
Canadians are, in fact, Canadian) is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. 
More important still is what Canadians aren’t: American.

"Canadians are not American. Canada, you
see, is a seething hotbed of anti-Americanism… Make no mistake, Canadians
harbour a deep and abiding resentment toward their neighbours to the south.

"Why do we Canadians hate American so much? Is it because the United States
sent in their troops and toppled our government? Is it because the CIA
assassinated our head of state? We should be so lucky. No. It’s far worse
than that. The ongoing, long-simmering, deep-running rage that most
Canadians direct against Americans is based upon the shocking fact that
Americans — brace yourself! — don’t know very much about Canada. 
It’s horrible. But true."

I haven’t noticed that Canadians hate Americans; like I said, everyone we’ve
dealt with has been nice as pie. (It is possible that they see us as better
than the average American, having chosen to live in Canada.)  But
MacLean’s (a weekly newsmagazine a la TIME or Newsweek) ran an
interview with a prominent Australian just after we arrived.  The
Canadian interviewer asked his subject what the Australians thought of
Canadians.  The subject replied that whenever they meet someone from
North America, it’s always safer to ask if they are Canadian.  If you
ask an American if he’s Canadian, he’ll simply say, no, I’m American. 
But if you ask a Canadian if they are American, they get really bent out of
shape.

Of course, it’s especially peculiar to be a Republican in Canada.  A
recent poll in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail newspaper asked Canadians
who they would vote for in the U.S. Presidential election, given the chance. 
Two-thirds opted for Kerry, and only 12% for Bush.  This is hostile
territory for conservatives.

But then, the reason I’m a conservative (really, more of a libertarian) is
that most of the time I distrust the government to do the right thing. 
It comes from American history: we rebelled against an oppressive King. 
Canada never had that experience, so perhaps they trust their government
more.  They certainly turn over a lot of their income to that
government.