The Washington Times

I had a conversation a couple months ago with a colleague, a political scientist, in which we were comparing notes on the presidential election. These were not George W. Bush’s best days. Nevertheless, he noted, every model that political scientists use to predict the outcome of presidential elections pointed to a Bush victory, based on the strength of the economy. There was one potential anomaly, and that was the wartime character of the Bush re-election bid.

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The Washington Times

There are two possibilities: Either the Kerry campaign actually believes that the Bush campaign is behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; or the Kerry campaign just thinks it’s good politics to blame President Bush personally for the Vietnam veterans who served in proximity to Mr. Kerry and have decided he is “unfit” to be commander in chief. The question, then, is which of these two views is the dumber?

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The Washington Times

Last week, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced the moderators for the 2004 election face-offs, and once again, I have been passed over in favor of the likes of Jim Lehrer and Bob Schieffer. In the brilliant Paddy Chayefsky-Sidney Lumet satire “Network,” Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, a network anchorman who has gone around the bend and become the “mad prophet of the airwaves,” mad as hell and not going to take it any more, vowing to speak the truth that no one else dares to.

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What gay marriage won’t change.

The Weekly Standard

IT IS POSSIBLE that at the end of the day, gay marriage will be an enduring reality, at least in some places. This troubles many people, even as others hold it up as an important element in the recognition of equal human dignity. But how much, really, will be changed by gay marriage? With all due respect, I think both proponents and opponents overstate the likely effects. Gay marriage will neither be especially dangerous to marriage as such, as opponents fear, nor will it usher in equal recognition for gay and lesbian couples, as proponents hope.

Some opponents of gay marriage take their position on the basis that homosexuality as such is morally wrong. This position provides an intellectually consistent grounding for opposition to gay marriage, but it is nowadays rarely the basis of arguments made in the public square. Instead, opponents of gay marriage generally argue that the expansion of the use of the term “marriage” to gay couples as well as the extension to them of the legal and customary rights of married couples will diminish the sanctity of marriage and weaken an institution that is of vital importance to the rearing of succeeding generations. In short, gay marriage will have a bad effect on marriages of the traditional man-woman variety.

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