Sign of the strange times: In previous primary election cycles we might hear candidates debate the finer points of social security indexing or the importance of having a humble and thoughtful foreign policy outlook (see Bush, George W., 2000). Ah, but in the 2008 fun house we see some GOP candidates working to define torture and giving a cost-benefit analysis on its impact. Needless to say, this trends slightly to the bizarre for the world’s most powerful country to (1) need to resort to torture as if we were living in a real episode of ‘24’ and (2) to have politicians make political hay out of it. It leads one to wonder just what kind of crowd Rudy Giuliani is teasing when he ponders the details of water boarding and gives an ambivalent answer about whether it’s torture -- mind you this is a form of deadly coercion developed nicely in the Spanish Inquisition. That we are discussing it is a double-edged sword -- it’s healthy in the same way that honestly discussing a disease is more beneficial than not but it’s sobering to think we have sunk to this point in an unhealthy quest for pristine security.
In my daily link, Walter Shapiro of Salon chronicles the heightened “macho” line taken by GOP candidates -- what I call the Village People campaign theme. And you have to give it the Republican candidate comedy writers who continue to turn out unforgettable quips -- first there was John McCain being all “tied up” during Woodstock in 1969 and then yesterday in Londonderry Giuliani accused the Dems of being acid-laden daydream believers. Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire had this post capturing the Giuliani routine at its psychedelic best:
“This is the world we live in. It’s not this happy, romantic-like world where we’ll negotiate with this one, or we’ll negotiate with that one and there will be no preconditions, and we’ll invite (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we’ll invite Osama (bin Laden) to the White House,” Giuliani said.
“Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the inaugural ball,” he added.
The best comeback came from Kate Bedingfield of the Edwards campaign. Barker quoted her as saying “Rudy Giuiliani’s convoluted foreign policy theories sound like George Bush, without all the thinking.”
UPDATE 1
As if on cue, Dem presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden sent out this press release (in his Senate capacity) urging senators to support his legislation that call for, among other things, banning torture. In a letter to fellow Senators he noted "it is sad that a nation with a longstanding, proud tradition of condemning torture finds itself embroiled in a debate regarding whether torture is legal. Both domestic law and international treaties clearly ban torture. Unfortunately, the current Administration's cramped, disingenuous arguments necessitate such a debate."
Biden might have added the same thing goes for too many presidential candidates whose tough talk defies both practicality and even highly flexible definations of sanity.
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