There they go

[erikred]

I watched the debate tonight and came away thinking that Kerry had done a good job of defining his position and pointing out glaring errors in Bush's policies. I thought that Bush did a fine job of hitting his talking points, but since they mostly centered on Kerry's inability to define himself, they sounded pretty flat to me.

Now how the heck, I thought, will the GOP spin this into a victory? The answer? Easily!

I just watched Rudolph Giuliani on the Daily Show, and he stated, verbatim, the same talking points Bush spoke during the debate. The GOP's strategy? Pretend the debates never happened, and just keep hitting those talking points. If they say it's so enough times, maybe the American people will buy it! What the hell, it's been working so far.

Comments

[tagryn]

- Apparently Iran has said this week that they're not interested in being given nuclear fuel. Maybe this is for national prestige reasons, but it sure doesn't reassure anyone that they're not interested in the Bomb. We'll see if the EU's preferred approach of negotiation and engagement can succeed in preventing Iranian proliferation, but it isn't looking good.

- My read on how the situation has developed is that the Chinese will be all too happy to be off the hook for taking responsibility for NK, and the minute we move towards bilateral talks, China is going to bail. Getting them back if we need to return to the multilateral route may not be easy, or possible, since their interpretation of bilateral talks may well be "well, you agreed that this is a problem between you and Pyongyang, so solve it."
I'm also not sure what bilateral talks will accomplish, since we tried that route with the 1994 Agreed Framework, which has apparently failed in its primary purpose of preventing North Korean proliferation. Without Chinese pressure, I don't see how we could enforce NKorean compliance any better than we did during the '90s.

- The average South Korean apparently believes that North Korea is not a threat to them, and that the U.S. is the real problem. There is a cynical side to me that wants to see us just withdraw totally from SK and let them rely on Kim Jong Il's good will, but we aren't contrary enough to do that. Well, yet, anyway.