Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Oh, Pulleeeze. Kerry was for cancelling the F-15 in 1984 when Reagan was confronting the Soviet Union. Successfully, so that in 1992 the Soviet Union didn't even exist.

Thanks for the ammo

Didn't these monkeys just get through killing the $39 billion Comanche program?

Pulleeeze yourself, Patrick. It's always wise to read the whole article before blowing your stack. To quote another part of it:

"Looking at the weapons that the RNC says Kerry voted to cut, a good case could be made, certainly at the time, that some of them (the B-2 bomber and President Reagan's 'Star Wars' missile-defense program) should have been cut. As for the others (the M-1 tank and the F-14, F-15, and F-16 fighter planes, among others), Kerry didn't really vote to cut them.

"The claim about these votes was made in the Republican National Committee 'Research Briefing' of Feb. 22. The report lists 13 weapons systems that Kerry voted to cut—the ones cited above, as well as Patriot air-defense missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and AH64 Apache helicopters, among others.

"It is instructive, however, to look at the footnotes. Almost all of them cite Kerry's vote on Senate bill S. 3189 (CQ Vote No. 273) on Oct. 15, 1990. Do a Google search, and you will learn that S. 3189 was the Fiscal Year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act, and CQ Vote No. 273 was a vote on the entire bill. There was no vote on those weapons systems specifically.

"On a couple of the weapons, the RNC report cites H.R. 5803 and H.R. 2126. Look those up. They turn out to be votes on the House-Senate conference committee reports for the defense appropriations bills in October 1990 (the same year as S. 3189) and September 1995.

"In other words, Kerry was one of 16 senators (including five Republicans) to vote against a defense appropriations bill 14 years ago. He was also one of an unspecified number of senators to vote against a conference report on a defense bill nine years ago. The RNC takes these facts and extrapolates from them that he voted against a dozen weapons systems that were in those bills. The Republicans could have claimed, with equal logic, that Kerry voted to abolish the entire U.S. armed forces, but that might have raised suspicions. Claiming that he opposed a list of specific weapons systems has an air of plausibility. On close examination, though, it reeks of rank dishonesty."

So: you claim to have evidence that Kerry had already voted to cancel the F-15 six years ago. By all means tell the RNC; they don't seem to know about it. Nor is this the end of Kaplan's article, by a long shot. Take a look at the rest.

Incidentally, Gorbachev insists that the Soviet Union was about to collapse in the 1980s without Reagan's defense buildup -- just as Moynihan predicted it would do in "Harper's" in 1979 -- and also insists that Reagan's military buildup actually delayed that collapse by one or two years.

Kerry campaigned in 1984--as I've pointed out already--for the Senate on a platform of $ 50 billion dollars in cuts to Reagan's Defense budget. Among the cuts, he called for CANCELLING the F-15 and F-14. In 1984.

Btw, Reagan was responsible for Gorbachev coming to power in the USSR. The Politburo thought they needed someone young and vigorous enough to match Ronbo.

I DID tell you to read the rest of Kaplan's article, Patrick:

"An examination of Kerry's real voting record during his 20 years in the Senate [link provided in the article] indicates that he did vote to restrict or cut certain weapons systems. From 1989-92, he supported amendments to halt production of the B-2 stealth bomber. (In 1992, George H.W. Bush halted it himself.) It is true that the B-2 came in handy during the recent war in Iraq—but for reasons having nothing to do with its original rationale.

"The B-2 came into being as an airplane that would drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. The program was very controversial at the time. It was extremely expensive. Its stealth technology had serious technical bugs. More to the point, a grand debate was raging in defense circles at the time over whether, in an age of intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range cruise missiles, the United States needed any new bomber that would fly into the Soviet Union's heavily defended airspace. The debate was not just between hawks and doves; advocates and critics could be found among both.

"In the latest war, B-2s—modified to carry conventional munitions—were among the planes that dropped smart bombs on Iraq. But that was like hopping in the Lincoln stretch limo to drop Grandma off at church. As for the other stealth plane used in both Iraq wars—the F-117, which was designed for non-nuclear missions—there is no indication that Kerry ever opposed it.

"The RNC doesn't mention it, but Kerry also supported amendments to limit (but not kill) funding for President Reagan's fanciful (and eventually much-altered) "Star Wars" missile-defense system. Kerry sponsored amendments to ban tests of anti-satellite weapons, as long as the Soviet Union also refrained from testing. In retrospect, trying to limit the vulnerability of satellites was a very good idea since many of our smart bombs are guided to their targets by signals from satellites.

"Kerry also voted for amendments to restrict the deployment of the MX missile (Reagan changed its deployment plan several times, and Bush finally stopped the program altogether) and to ban the production of nerve-gas weapons.

"At the same time, in 1991, Kerry opposed an amendment to impose an arbitrary 2 percent cut in the military budget. In 1992, he opposed an amendment to cut Pentagon intelligence programs by $1 billion. In 1994, he voted against a motion to cut $30.5 billion from the defense budget over the next five years and to redistribute the money to programs for education and the disabled. That same year, he opposed an amendment to postpone construction of a new aircraft carrier. In 1996, he opposed a motion to cut six F-18 jet fighters from the budget. In 1999, he voted against a motion to terminate the Trident II missile. (Interestingly, the F-18 and Trident II are among the weapons systems that the RNC claims Kerry opposed.)

"Are there votes in Kerry's 20-year record as a senator that might look embarrassing in retrospect? Probably. But these are not the ones."

Incidentally, the Feb. 8 Washington Post article from which -- after writing my last message above -- I learned that Kerry did indeed oppose the F-15 in 1984 is the same one from which I drew the following quote in the thread below:

"Republicans who have worked with him, especially the closely knit bipartisan brotherhood of Vietnam veterans in the Senate, see a more complicated portrait of Kerry. 'He's bright, very articulate, tough . . . the complete package,' said Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam vet who is personally close to Kerry. 'He's the most difficult opponent we can face in November.' "

So -- regardless of whether or not Kerry was correct to oppose the F-15 and F-14 in 1984 -- if you want to portray him as a moronic kneejerk dove, I suggest you stop slugging it out with me and take it up with Hagel.

Postscript: Mark Kleiman says "Kerry now gets it right" ( http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/terrorism_and_its_control_/2004/02/kerry_gets_it_right.php ):

"As late as the election of 1960, there was no noticeable partisan element to the debate over the size of the defense budget and the degree of assertiveness the country should pursue in foreign affairs. John F. Kennedy attacked Richard Nixon over the (nonexistent) 'missile gap' and the (utterly trivial) issue of Quemoy and Matsu.

"That all turned around in the late 1960s. Since the War in Vietnam, the hawk-dove dimension in American politics has mapped fairly well onto the Right-Left dimension. That polarization has been bad for the country, and a disaster for the Democratic Party. But it was the almost inevitable consequence of the rising concern with human rights issues on the Left, and the fact that Cold War strategy often meant that U.S. military and diplomatic forces were aligned with fairly horrible Right-wing elements abroad: with the 'dirty warriors' of Argentina, for example, and the white minority regime in South Africa.

"The fall of the Wall and the rise of jihadist terror as the major threat to U.S. interests and values created a new context for the dispute over how great our forces should be and how aggressively they should be deployed. Suddenly there wasn't any particular reason why a strong defense should be thought of as serving the values of the Right. Even the ongoing contests with Russia and China had next to no ideological dimension.

"But the politics of national security remained stuck in its Cold War rut. The Democrats and the Left, associated with a willingness to impose taxes and spend the revenues on public purposes, continued to think of defense spending primarily as a competitor for funds with their domestic agenda. The Republicans and the Right (except for the libertarians) exempted any military spending, no matter how frivolous, from the concern about the excessive size of government. The Pentagon brass, including Colin Powell, openly connived with the Republicans to defeat Bill Clinton over the gays-in-the-military issue, and the military contractors poured their campaign contributions into Republican coffers, secure in their belief that Republican electoral victories were bullish for for the defense sector.

"Since 9-11, elements of the old antiwar Left have been treating the current conflict as if it were merely Vietnam revisited. The worst extremes of the Vietnam era haven't been repeated-- no one is carrying Taliban or Iraqi flags and chanting about how the national enemy is 'gonna win' -- but the combination of "War is Not the Answer' quasi-pacifism (personally, it seems to me that whether war is the answer depends on the question) and the sense that American power is, on the whole, a bad thing for the world and needs to be cut back and tamed remained to fuel the A.N.S.W.E.R. rallies and the Dean meet-ups.

"That's why I supported Wesley Clark for President. I thought he offered the best hope for recapturing the Democratic Party for an unapologetic patriotism, and the symbols of patriotism -- especially the flag -- for the Democratic Party. I thought, and think, that to beat George W. Bush, a Democratic candidate has to challenge him on security issues from the Right, exploiting the political vulnerability Bush has created for himself by his excessive deference to the needs of the Saudi royal family. I've been waiting to see whether Kerry or Edwards would be willing, once Dean was out of the way, to commit to the course of action I think right for the country and right for the campaign.

"Yesterday I got my answer. Kerry gets it. The speech is just about pitch-perfect. It doesn't hit the Saudi connection, and it doesn't make the point that irresponsible tax cuts are that much more irresponsible in wartime, and it doesn't deal with the unnecessary domestic dissension the administration has, unpatriotically, created. But it says, clearly, that the struggle against the jihadists is everyone's struggle, that the current Administration has been pursuing it fecklessly, and that a Kerry administration would pursue it more competently.

"As of this morning, before I read the speech, I intended to vote for Wesley Clark in the California primary on Tuesday, to express my conviction that the eventual candidate should pursue a muscular security policy. Now that's not necessary. I can express the same sentiment by voting for John Kerry, and I intend to do so."

(Link to Kerry's speech follows)

My feelings exactly. Had Dean been the nominee, I would -- thanks mostly to his psychotic suggestion that Bush might have known about the 9-11 attack in advance -- almost certainly have held my nose very tightly and voted for Bush. A lousy economic policy can merely swindle and impoverish you; nuclear proliferation can get you vaporized. Now I'm free of that unpleasant choice.

Had Dean been the nominee, I would -- thanks mostly to his psychotic suggestion that Bush might have known about the 9-11 attack in advance -- almost certainly have held my nose very tightly and voted for Bush.

I love arrogant comments like these.

It will give me all the more pleasure to vote for Howard Dean in November and deny John "the election stealers bamboozled me on Iraq" Kerry my vote.

It will be the first time I haven't voted for a Democratic nomineee. I wonder if that's a positive sign for the Party.

Had Dean been the nominee, I would -- thanks mostly to his psychotic suggestion that Bush might have known about the 9-11 attack in advance -- almost certainly have held my nose very tightly and voted for Bush.

I love arrogant comments like these.

It will give me all the more pleasure to vote for Howard Dean in November and deny John "the election stealers bamboozled me on Iraq" Kerry my vote.

It will be the first time I haven't voted for a Democratic nomineee. I wonder if that's a positive sign for the Party.

My God. Cannons to Right of me, cannons to Left of me... Howard Dean DID say that it was an "interesting possibility" that Bush knew about the imminent 9-11 attack and let it happen anyway. Even if you assume that Bush and the other members of his administration are flat-out cold-blooded homicidal maniacs (which seems somewhat doubtful), Cheney was IN the White House when the plane that attacked Washington was apparently headed directly for it, and Rumsfeld was IN the Pentagon when that plane changed course and hit it instead -- the only thing that saved him was the fact that it hit another part of the building. If Bush and Ashcraft knew this attack was coming, they didn't bother to tell Cheney and Rumsfeld about it, which strikes me as carrying White House infighting to a somewhat implausible extreme. Howard, however, didn't bother to think of such things. (One of "Slate's" writers -- who was just finishing up a pro-Dean piece -- says he tore it up when he heard about that Dean comment.)

Not that I wasn't uneasy about him before. His initial opposition to invading Iraq was not based on anything so rational as an awareness that the White House was deliberately exaggerating the evidence of Iraq's nuclear program, or that Bush would bungle the occupation and reconstruction beyond belief by underfunding it (including not initiating the occupation and inspection of the places in Iraq where CBWs might be stored until WEEKS after the occupation was complete. As Brad says, we'd better pray that Saddam really didn't have any CBWs -- because if he did, thanks to Bush's shilly-shallying they are now safely in the hands of You Know Who.) But Dean didn't mention such future factors in his un-thoughtout kneejerk opposition to an Iraq invasion -- which is why Willliam Saletan was already uneasy about him, and why I was uneasy about him. I probably would have voted for him in the general election anyway, however -- until his 9-11 comment, which convinced me that People-Powered Howard had lost his people-powered marbles.

It still seems not to be penetrating with Bruce that wanting to cut defense spending AFTER the end of the Cold War (indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union) is a verrrry different thing than to want to do so at its heighth.

But, I'm interested, how does Kerry manage to get a lifetime ADA rating to the left of Teddy Kennedy if he supposedly voted so often for more military spending?

"It still seems not to be penetrating with Bruce that wanting to cut defense spending AFTER the end of the Cold War (indeed, after the demise of the Soviet Union) is a verrrry different thing than to want to do so at its height."

Patrick, I'm well aware of that -- as Kaplan said he was aware of that. It would be impossible for anyone NOT to be aware of that. And, of course, it is totally irrelevant to the real question: was Kerry correct in saying that Reagan was overspending even at the height of the Cold War? Kaplan provides reason to think that he often was thus correct, although he doesn't specify Kerry's opposition to the F-14 and F-15 in that respect. (Indeed, I don't even know yet whether Kerry actually ended up voting against them once he actually entered the Senate, as opposed to being opposed to them during his 1984 campaign.)

Which leaves us with the really central question: is Kerry foolishly over-dovish right now? Kleiman -- who, to put it mildly, is not a kneejerk dove -- says flatly that he isn't, judging from his recent speech on the subject. Sen. Hagel seems to think he isn't, either.

"But, I'm interested, how does Kerry manage to get a lifetime ADA rating to the left of Teddy Kennedy if he supposedly voted so often for more military spending?"

Well, gee, it might be because Teddy also often voted for it. Unless you're saying that Kaplan is lying in saying that Kerry voted against military cuts on the occasions that Kaplan specifies.

" 'But, I'm interested, how does Kerry manage to get a lifetime ADA rating to the left of Teddy Kennedy if he supposedly voted so often for more military spending?'

" Well, gee, it might be because Teddy also often voted for it. "

Teddy being so famously hawkish?

Nope. Teddy being, perhaps, justified in most of his criticism of Reagan for military overspending during the height of the Cold War. (As Kaplan says Kerry frequetly was in his similar objections to many of Reagan's militry programs, such as the B-2 and SDI.) If you think that such-and-such a weapons system was justified (such as the F-14 or F-15), then argue for it.

" Nope. Teddy being, perhaps, justified in most of his criticism..."

Which is not only not responsive to the question of how Kerry got his far left ADA rating, it contradicts your: " Well, gee, it might be because Teddy also often voted for it. "

Patrick, what I was referring to is that -- as Kaplan pointed out -- Kerry very often voted against cuts in the military. Period. He provides no evidence on whether Kennedy also voted against those cuts. He also points out that there wre pretty good reasons for him to vote against both the B-2 and SDI during the Cold War (although Kerry never completely opposed Reagan's program for the latter). Kaplan has nothing to say about whether Kerry was correct to oppose the F-14 and F-15 (or, for that matter, whether he continued to do so after entering the Senate). I suggest you focus on the latter. I also suggest you focus on telling us exactly why Kerry (and Kennedy) actually were wrong to oppose specific weapons progams on the part of Reagan.

Bruce, you still haven't explained how a couple of Massachusetts Senators with ADA ratings in the 90s can be pro-defense. Are you seriously arguing that the ADA is big on Defense spending?

I never said that Kennedy and Kerry wre "hawkish", Patrick. The correct question, of course, is whether they (and the ADA) were, and are, hawkish enough. Where the current war is concerned, Mark Kleiman provides strong reason to think that Kerry is.

Additional note: I challenge you to read Kerry's speech on foreign policy linked to by Kleiman ( http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0227.html ) and find one word in it that sounds dangerously dovish. For starters -- contrary to James Lileks' recent smear -- it doesn't include a single hint that he would ever require UN permission for the US to take military action against its enemies.