Occasional thoughts on an accidental president

Is it just me, or do you too think that the famous 32 page memorandum outlining the rules and regulations to be followed in the presidential debate series has effectively ensured there will be no debate?

A former secretary of state (James Baker, representing the Republicans) and a hotshot Washington lawyer (Vernon Jordan) reportedly spent days holed up at the Waldorf Astoria, here in New York, to decide that the lectern would be precisely 50 inches high on the side facing the audience, and 48 inches high, not a millimetre more or less, on the side facing the debaters. Deciding, too, that any paper used for note-taking had to be white – and only a specific kind of pen or pencil could be used to take said notes (never mind that no one in the audience could see either the paper or the pen anyways).

But when it comes to the 'debate' itself, the elaborate set of rules and regulations seems geared to ensuring there will be none. No asking direct questions of one another? Who dreamt up that dilly? If a reporter asks you questions and you respond, isn't that called a press conference?

Wouldn't you like to know which of the two parties insisted on the clause that prohibits direct interaction between the debaters? Because the answer to that tells you which of the parties is running scared; which of the two candidates believes his position is so indefensible that it cannot stand scrutiny save under the most controlled conditions.

On another note, does it strike you that the adjectives 'ludicrous' and 'absurd' – used, to the accompaniment of Oscar-bait facial expressions by President George W Bush during the debate – pretty much typifies the administration's central case for making war in Iraq?

How does it go, again? 'We gave Saddam Hussein an opportunity to disarm. He would not. So we had to go in and attack him.' That, in sum, is the stated position?

All right, so answer this. 'Disarm' what? The Bush administration has since said the man has no weapons of mass destruction – nor, in fact, did he have any weapons of any significance whatsoever. So what precisely was he supposed to disarm himself of? That little unloaded popgun he was found with at the time of his capture, and that Bush now reportedly has on his Oval Office desk?

The situation is analogous to two policemen arresting me, and cuffing my hands behind my back (read, UN sanctions, weapons inspections). And then another cop comes along and goes, put your hands over your head, now! PUT your HANDS OVER your HEAD!!! NOW!!! OR I WILL SHOOT!!!

BANG!!!

Hullo? Officer? I would have, you know – only, my hands were already tied?

Think about it. Ever heard of anything more ludicrous than asking a man to lay down arms he does not have, then attacking him for his refusal to do what he could not have done?

This election is changing my attitude to footwear. I'll never be able to wear flip-flops again. A charge that appeared, at least superficially, to have some substance is increasingly being turned into a joke.

Like, yesterday, 15 minutes before the Bush-Kerry debate had even begun, I found this on the Bush campaign weblog: 'Kerry flip flops again. Is for lights on the podium before he is against lights on the podium.'

The one thing this whole presidential election has done for me is given me a healthy respect for our own democracy, back in India – and a growing concept for the electoral politics of 'the world's oldest democracy'. Surely, given all the problems besetting this country, the party in power, on its official site, can do more than reduce the entire debate to the depths of absurdity?

And speaking of flip-flops? Many have made the case for why the war in Iraq is wrong. Most have made that case with the benefit of hindsight – as in Kerry's comment that Bush fought the war without having a plan for winning the peace.

Hindsight is easy. My respect is reserved for those very, very few evolved thinkers who made the case, well before the war. One of the earliest – and most eloquent – advocates for why a war in Iraq would be stupid spoke his piece way back in 1992, shortly after the Gulf War. At the end of a speech, this gent was taking questions, and one of them was: 'Why, after having
defeated Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, did you not pursue him to Iraq and end his threat once and for all?'

This was his response: "I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

"And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional US casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the [1991] conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war.

"And the question in my mind is, how many additional American casualties is Saddam [Hussein] worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we had achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

Consider those words. Here is someone saying that if the US had invaded Iraq then – when, in fact, Hussein reportedly did have programmes for the creation of weapons of mass destruction – it would not have been easy to get out. That the US troops would have been bogged down. That extricating them would not have been easy. That Saddam Hussein was not worth even 146 American lives.

His identity? Richard Cheney, secretary of defence in the administration of President George H W Bush, who was speaking, in 1992, to the Discovery Institute in Seattle. (Kudos to the Seattle Post Intelligencer for digging this one up). The same Dick Cheney who, as vice-president of the United States today, is the voice of war; who insists that it is the right war to fight; who maintains that anyone who questions the need for the war in Iraq is unpatriotic.

Flip-flops, anyone? What size do you take?