I Feel a Draft

Politics simultaneously repels and attracts me. On the one hand, there is a truly sordid and destructive aspect to our elections, where the attempts to destroy a candidate's political opponent drown out any kind of attempt to find the right way to move forward on the problems and opportunities that confront us. On the other hand, I love strategy, and there is a huge amount of strategy in campaigns: when and how to make what statements and proposals; which groups can be cleaved to your base or separated from your opponents; how to remove your opponent's ability to act without seeming ridiculous.

Frankly, Bush is a master politician. Where Clinton, also a master politician, used a bludgeon and a smile (Now, I wish I could say that my evil opponent who eats babies in his breakfast cereal agreed with me that motherhood and apple pie are good, but I just can't get over how he always disagrees with me on these fundamental decency issues.), Bush just smiles a lot, makes a few self-deprecating jokes, and then trips his opponents while they are running with knives. It never fails to amaze me when Bush lets his opponents go on for months about his National Guard service, for example, letting them build up an intricate and massive myth and sell, sell, sell it - only to then release all of his records that utterly demolish the myth in a way that wouldn't have happened if the "debate" hadn't moved beyond the purely technical aspects.

There is another opportunity that the Democrats are creating for Bush (besides this one) by pushing the draft idea. Brief recap: Democrats have been sponsoring bills and making statements that the draft will have to come back, then blaming George Bush for secretly planning to reinstate the draft. Dumb, but if you don't pay attention it might score points on the margins. The Democrats are pushing this harder now, with spam mailings to college kids that are frightening them and their parents.

But this is a very dangerous game, because it's pretty apparent that Selective Service will never again be used by the US, at least not in any forseeable future. So all Bush has to do is wait until this screeching becomes really noticable, then call for the abolition of the Selective Service. Something like this should do it:

"Democrats in the House and Senate, such as Charlie Rangel, have been calling for reinstituting the draft. Frankly, this is a dangerous idea. America's armed forces have been fighting our enemies around the world since we were viciously attacked on 9/11, and have done so with an amazingly small number of casualties, both of our forces and of the innocent women and children among which our enemies cower. This unprecedentedly low level of casualties is only possible because of the relentless and realistic training we instill in our long-service volunteers. This cannot be done with draftees, who leave the force just as they begin to become effective.

Really, though, it's worse than this. Since Jimmy Carter and the Democrat Congress started Selective Service registration in 1980, millions of young men have been compelled to register themselves with the Federal government, and the cost has been staggering. It is simply not possible to operate America's armed forces with draftees, and it's not moral to keep up the charade of registering young men for a draft that will never come.

And that is why I am asking the Congress to repeal the Selective Service Act and disband the draft boards forever."

Something like that, after the Democrats are in a frenzy about it, is the kind of thing that kills an opponent. Let their fangs grow long, then chop them off. It's what Bush excels at, and apparently the Democrats excel at falling for it. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

UPDATE: Andrew Olmsted had similar thoughts last night.

UPDATE: John Hawkins succinctly addresses the possibility of a draft: "anyone who tells you there is going to be a draft is dumb as a brick or a liar who's trying to mislead you. In either case, if they tell you there's going to be a draft, you can safely stop paying attention to them."

Posted by Jeff at September 23, 2004 12:26 PM | Link Cosmos