The Crux of the Election

Concerning the recent "flap" over Rice's pre-9/11 speach, Andrew Sullivan sums up my exact thoughts in words that I could never write:

The undelivered Condi Rice speech, leaked to the Washington Post, reaffirms what we already knew. The Bush administration - like the administration before it - did not adequately understand or guard against, let alone deal with, the threat of Islamist terrorism. Why is this such a scandal? The failure before 9/11 was a failure of intelligence but more deeply a failure to comprehend the full measure of the evil we face. Democracies tend to do that. It's hard enough to grapple with the idea that we could soon be facing a nuclear, chemical or biological catastrophe in the next few months or years now, let alone before the 9/11 massacre. What matters is what we're doing in the present, what our strategy is, how best to defeat the enemy. I don't get the political controversy, I really don't (although I appreciate the need to get to the bottom of what failed). Who believed the Bush administration was fully on the case in its first eight months? Of course they weren't. The fundamental issue in this election is: which candidate would best protect us in the future? Fighting partisan wars over the past is at best a distraction, at worst a dangerous one.

The Dems are out fishing. But if they think they're going to hook just one, it's going to be Clinton who gets pulled up along with Bush. I wonder what the implications would be for a Hillary run.