The coming November elections are enormously important for the future of this country which is why it is so distressing that the Democrats seem poised to take over the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well. It's not so much that the Democrats are simply not prepared nor qualified to lead the nation in times such as these, but that the campaign they have waged in this election cycle has been so empty of substantive ideas. They have not sought to offer a competing vision of what our nation should be so much as they have simply offered themselves as the "un-Bush".
The fact that the Democrats are touting Barack Obama as presidential timber for 2008 shows the thinness of their talent. With few qualified candidates they must rely on Hillary Clinton, currently a freshman senator from New York, and Obama, who has completed just two years in the Senate and has accomplished next to nothing in that position so far.
The Democrats are a party bereft of ideas. Listening to their candidates in debates and in interviews is frustrating because they rarely give a direct or relevant answer to a question. Sometimes they say nothing in very attractive fashion as Barack Obama does, but it's still nothing. They seem to be counting not on the power of their ideas to sweep them into office but rather on the power of their media allies to convince the public that it's time for a change.
Bob Casey campaigns against Rick Santorum almost solely on the basis of Santorum's record of voting with George Bush 98% of the time. That, and the fact that Santorum maintains a residence near D.C. He refuses to answer simple questions in interviews about what he would do differently than Santorum and how he would do it. Reading his non-answer to questions put to him by a Philadelphia Inquirer interviewer induces in one the uneasy feeling that this potential U.S. senator is little more than an empty suit running on his father's reputation. Worse, in order to achieve that lofty perch he will have to unseat one of the best qualified, best informed, and most effective legislators in the Senate in Rick Santorum. Watch Tim Russert's interview of these two men, compare Casey's answers to those of Santorum, and you'll get a sense of the vast distance between the two.
Another Democratic senatorial candidate, Harold Ford of Tennessee, first denied and then admitted he was at a Playboy Super Bowl party last January. There may have been nothing wrong with being at the party, but if so, why did he deny being there? It's bad enough that politicians lie about the big stuff, but it's crazy that they lie about things they apparently feel they have no reason to feel guilty about. "I like football and I like girls," Ford informs us by way of exculpation, but this just makes him sound Clintonesque and that's not a reassuring quality.
Democrat John Murtha, one of the leading anti-war voices in their party, has been revealed on a never-before-released FBI videotape negotiating a bribe in 1980 about which he has been lying for the past twenty five years. He thinks he's talking to a representative of a rich Saudi, but it's in fact an FBI agent. The serious conversations start at about the twenty minute mark on the tape. Murtha was on the House Ethics committee at the time and intends to run for House majority leader if the Democrats win in November. One supposes that he'll be able to negotiate a lot of bribes from that office. Watch the tape. It'll turn your stomach. And this is the guy passing moral judgment on Bush's policy in Iraq.
Alcee Hastings, who was once impeached by a Democratic Congress for bribery and malfeasance, is in line to chair the House Intelligence Committee should the Democrats succeed in gaining control of the House.
The fact that these two miscreants, Hastings and Murtha, are in line for such important positions if the Democrats prevail on November 7th confirms Republican charges that Democrats don't take national security seriously and certainly can't be trusted with it.