Still Glad You Hired Him?

Kristol's column today is on about the same level as Glenn Beck. I know the Times needed to hire another conservative, and he's a known name, but Kristol seems to be proving to be a little hacky and not up to the challenge of sounding smarter than his Democratic Times counterparts, the way Safire was and Brooks, though fairly moderate, is. Most people take issue with today's column because of its attacks on Obama's patriotism. But the silliness there is too obvious to get into. This is what gets me, because it's maybe the most widely misunderstood thing about Obama's campaign:

"John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves."

But the true audacity of Obama's campaign is that it is largely a movement for more citizen involvement in civic life. He has the message and the inspirational capability to get a good percentage of us to put down our fake video game guitars and stop staring at Paris Hilton's vagina for three minutes and actually add to this country. There's no telling whether we'll actually respond, or if our apathy has rendered us comatose, but isn't an attempt at this necessary in dire times? Despite its necessity, the other candidates do not promise anything like this because they cannot.

And compare that idea to this Bush response from last year.

Why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something? The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the volunteer military - the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They're the only people who are actually sacrificing anything at this point.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States, but yet, when you think about the psychology of the country, it is somewhat down because of this war.

This has been the Republican policy with regard to everything. Avert your eyes, and we will protect you like a great mother walrus. The idea of the public engaging in civic life is actually discouraged. And don't think that McCain or Clinton will be much different. Although they may sound different, at the bottom of things, they will again ask us to defeat the terrorists by going to the mall, because they will not have any success asking us to do anything that we were not planning to do anyway.