Stephen Hayes wrote a great piece on Dick Cheney recently in the Wall Street Journal, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the comparison with the shallowness of what passes as serious political discussion in, for example, the “debates” among the presidential candidates, particularly Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton. Further to my “questions for the frontrunner” in the last issue, I wonder when they will be required to answer the serious national security questions and the questions about how they plan to pursue this war after January 2009. Back to Cheney, who says to Hayes, “This is not Desert Storm. It’s not Korea. It’s not World War II. This is a struggle that will go on in that part of the world for decades… We just have to have people to understand that and understand that the alternative is not peace… it is not to go back to the world before 9/11.” Serious indeed.
