Why We're in the Mess We're In

Because instead of a Churchill, we're stuck with a Porky Pig:

Total effort includes informing and motivating the citizenry, at the very least. Now it may take the realization that war needs be fought at home, too. James Q. Wilson did not say it, but I will: There is a movement abroad to destroy the United States. The peace party -- Wilson estimates about 20 percent of voters to be a "permanent peace party" --- the global warming hysterics, the gay "marriage" movement, the ugly outsproutings everywhere of political correctness, multiculturalism, the free immigration movements, all the prominent pieties of the modern age, are all of a piece, all the enemy. They aim to destroy America. What's more, they explicitly say so.

George W. Bush couldn't handle that. He couldn't stand up to it. He had his moment, he had the ball right after 9/11, and he dropped it. I have come to agree, agonizingly, with Mr. Bush's liberal mockers in one regard. The man just can't talk. We have needed a good talker, so, so badly.

So although I, too, support victory in the war on terrorists, not only in Iraq but wherever they are found or supported -- the Bush doctrine, gone, gone -- I must say "Yes, but" to my friend Jeff Jacoby. Because I fear we've lost this one, and maybe a great deal more. Absent another Reagan. Maybe absent a Lincoln. Maybe absent even a Pinochet.

Every time Dubya opens his mouth, I cringe. He's even less of an effective communicator than his old man, which I didn't even think was possible.

That could be countered if he were a strong ideologue, like Calvin Coolidge. He's as squishy as his father yet less able to get his message across.

When everything depends on bypassing the treasonous media to communicate directly with the American people, is it any wonder we're in such dire straits now?

If the Democrats had anybody who could silver-tongue surrender, we'd all be pointed toward Mecca right now.