Sunday, January 30, 2005

Stuff that I thought was interesting on Iraqi Election Day

Last night I'm watching Fox News (yeah, yeah), and they've got this fellow who was a former hostage over there, a truck driver from Mississippi or some such, and he winds debating the propriety of Sen. Kennedy's call for troop withdrawal with Jesse Jackson, and he managed to get the upper hand, even though Jackson started out with some memorable things to say about what it was like when he got to vote for the first time in the 1960s. I'm not too sure how far you can go an analogy between the effect of the Voting Rights Act for black Americans in the 1960s and this weekend's vote in Iraq, but the Rev. Jackson seemed to be saying the Iraqis just aren't worth it and the Southern man was saying, no, we need to help these people, for their sake and ours.

This was all very ironic and interesting, but once I saw who was winning I clicked back to the Golf Channel, for an important replay of old dudes playing golf in the mists of Hawaii, the superficial fellow that I am.

When I went to vote back in November, I had some reasons, but none of them were as compelling as whatever made those Iraqis run the gauntlet to be counted over there this weekend. I understand (via Instapundit) that already the voting has resulted in some shifting goalposts (which seems like a perilous phrase for either side when talking about Iraq).

But, if you were looking for reasons for the vote in November, a lot of what bummed people out about Kerry is described in this Althouse post about his appearance today on Meet the Press. (There's a lot more to Prof. Althouse besides the new car.)

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