Reinforcements on the hustings

I see the convalescing Bill Clinton is about to leave his Chappaqua infirmary to hit the campaign trail for Democratic presidential candidate Jean-Francois Kerry.

Reportedly the reinforcements will arrive next week. Most likely the ex-Boy President will not hit the campaign trail too thunderously. Having recently undergone quadruple bypass surgery, he remains a bit tender. But he will put in a good word for the whole Democratic ticket that now strains to save America from the Bush Madness. You know the Democrats’ line: an economy reminiscent of Herbert Hoover’s, the Bible Belt threatening our easy-going hedonism, George Bush’s legions brutalizing all the peace-loving peoples of the Middle East.

Boy Clinton with characteristic obliquity has spoken from both sides of his mouth on the war in Iraq, but those of us who follow his cavortings fastidiously recall that he and his lovely wife Bruno were the first Democrats to say ousting Saddam was a “diversion” from the war on terror. Thus began one of the liberal Democrats’ favorite dodges from taking resolute action against America’s enemies, to wit, they call out their intellectualoids to bog us down in tendentious arguments about the nature of our enemies, their whereabouts, their true intentions, and the proper way to pacify those enemies. Both the Clintons and Mr. Kerry would deal with them ferociously, though at the United Nations, the Hague, or why not the Cannes Film Festival?

My guess is Mr. Clinton will not get terribly detailed in his criticism of President George W. Bush’s war on terror or even his war in Iraq. His record on terror is not terribly good.

In his mammoth autobiography “My Life” (wags call it “My Lies”), Mr. Clinton heaves off precisely one paragraph on airport security during his administration, though he had ample warning threats were afoot similar to the assault that came on September 11, 2001. For instance, on Dec. 4, 1998, according to the September 11 Commission Report, President Clinton received a Presidential Daily Brief whose headline read: “Bin Ladin preparing to hijack U.S. aircraft and other attacks.” Last July 23, the New York Post noted chillingly that the Dec. 4 briefing “cited information indicating that bin Ladin and his allies were preparing an aircraft hijacking and other attacks in the United States to free three jailed Arabs, including the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, and ’Blind Sheik’ Omar Abdel-Rahman.” The Playboy President did nothing.

The first World Trade Center Bombing was but the first of a series of terrorist provocations that failed to sober up the Boy President. There were also the attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole. Nor did he do much to enforce U.N. sanctions against Saddam.

Foreign policy and American national security are the most important issues in Campaign 2004. Since September 11, 2001, they have been the most important issues in the country. A former draft dodger and a Vietnam War resister are not very compelling figures in debating those issues.

There are many reasons Mr. Kerry, though starting with a large base in the Democratic Party, been unable to move ahead in this race. But fundamentally, he is oblivious to his fellow Americans’ concern about terror and national security. Mr. Kerry is a fantasist, aloof in a narcissistic cloud. The American people perceive there is something wrong with him.

At some point, Democratic leaders must ask themselves how they get stuck year after year with such improbable presidential candidates. In 1992, they had a draft dodger with more skeletons in his closet than a grave robber. In 2000, they had another of their fantasists who could not beat a little-known Republican governor despite his administration’s claims to peace and prosperity. This time around they have a candidate so lacking in judgment as to have based much of his campaign on his behavior of 35 years ago, behavior he should have recognized was at best controversial.

How could Mr. Kerry have been so clueless as to have thought veterans and other advocates of strong defense would elect him in time of war? Nothing in his record reveals a strong leader. In fact, he was a mere also-ran until Howard Dean self-destructed.

The Democratic opponent slipping behind in the polls today is neither a George McGovern from 1972 nor a John F. Kennedy fighting the Cold War. He is at one with the Draft Dodger of 1992, though without the charm.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor in chief of the American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His latest book is “Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House.”