Well it depends on who you ask? David Broder in the Washington Post recently told the world that he was rankled by Kerry and Gore's "know-it-all arrogance". He adds that many Americans were and so we are forced to wonder, do Americans want leaders who are just not that smart.
I recently watched George Allen answer the question, "Knowing what you know today about Iraq, would you give the President authorization for the war?" Allen danced around for a while and then finally said that he would vote again the same way. So now US citizens must believe that a senator who was told to authorize a war because the country in question had weapons of mass destruction (WMD); then learned that the country had no WMD; and the senator knows the case was made to him using deliberately faulty evidence, that the correct answer is, "Sure I would do it again."
And let's see what else does Allen (and countless other legislators) know today that they didn't know then. How about that the US would not be greeted as liberators, that our troops would find themselves immersed in a sectarian bloodbath (or civil war, depending on who you ask), that the cost would be many times what they were told, and that the job can not be done with a lean fighting force?
Wait, there's more. We now know that by diverting our troops from Afghanistan into Iraq, we couldn't maintain the peace there, that the Taliban would re-emerge. Oh and there is that bothersome report today that intelligence analysts believe that the war in Iraq has spurred recruitment in the terrorist world or to put it another way, the Iraq war is helping us lose the war on terror.
Broder and countless others have derided the liberal blogosphere because we are angry. So here is another question for us to ponder...
When you live in a country where the President is lobbying for torture and a former POW who was tortured lets him continue to torture, when that same group of legislators lets the executive spy on Americans, when the President and others tell you that to disagree with them on the war or anything else is unpatriotic, when our economy is hanging by a thread, and our security as a nation is everyday undermined by a war that is draining our resources and spirit and killing and grievously wounding far too many, would it be possible if you were a smart person to not feel angry? Anger seems to me the only rational response. It is the one that created this country. An angry group of intellectuals did not believe King George had the right to tax Americans without giving them representation.
Anger and intelligence are not a bad thing. It is a combination that often gets things done--whether it be declaring our independence from England or unseating a sanctimonious Senator from Connecticut who told us that, "We undermine the President's credibility at our nation's peril." And I hope that this anger will unseat a racist Senator from Virginia and deliver us the House of Representatives in November. [Note to Karl Rove, if you tell us there will be an October surprise and the President invades Iran, then you've told us the President makes policy decisions based on politics. That is NOT smart. The lower gas prices in September and October also appear to be a rather transparent November calculation. Not so smart to let us know that you have control over the spigot but you only bother to lower prices before an election.]