The central issue of the current campaign ought to be the nature and ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party — its reckless disregard for the world in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, its repression of Hong Kong, what may be genocidal treatment of the Uighurs and its plans to dominate not just the South China Sea but the international order for decades to come. The election of 2020, like that of 1984, ought to turn on which candidate is best equipped to deal with the country’s most significant adversary.
A few thoughts:
* Hewitt is wrong that the CCP should be the "central issue" of the presidential campaign. We should look in our own backyard, first! We've got a raging pandemic to deal with, as well as an incipient Depression. If the United States can't get its own act together, our ability to act effectively on the world stage will be curtailed anyway. China? It's Issue Number Three, at best.
* It's notable that Hewitt raises the issue of the Uighurs without noting John Bolton's report that President Trump sold out the Uighurs to the Chinese in favor of getting a trade deal. It's additionally notable that in a column that purports to compare Joe Biden and Donald Trump on the China issue, he makes no effort at all to defend Trump's handling of China.
* Meanwhile, Hewitt's main attack on Biden is that Biden was wrong about some stuff ... 40 years ago. It's unconvincing. Daniel Larison has made a better case on why to be skeptical of Biden on foreign policy, but it comes from a distinctly less militaristic bent.
* But Hewitt is right about one thing:
The left has long liked to attack conservatives for a supposed lack of intelligence and sophistication, along with alleged warmongering and other crimes. One of my favorite novels, John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” is marred by this twitch. It was published in March 1989, an unfortunate mere eight months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is full of the then-conventional contempt for Reagan that accompanied the nuclear freeze movement, that condemned Reagan’s deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe, his embrace of strategic nuclear defense — derided as “Star Wars,” first by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and then everywhere on the left — and, of course, opposition to Reagan’s support for the contra rebels of Nicaragua, which reached hyper-pitch as Iran-contra scandal unfolded.
“The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law — they disgrace democracy by claiming what they do, they do for democracy,” Irving has his narrator rail. “They should be in jail,” he huffs after labeling Reagan an “old geezer” and slamming him with the innuendo of Hollywood stupidity routinely traded in by anti-Reagan newspaper columnists in those days.
The left has long liked to attack conservatives for a supposed lack of intelligence and sophistication, along with alleged warmongering and other crimes. One of my favorite novels, John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” is marred by this twitch. It was published in March 1989, an unfortunate mere eight months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is full of the then-conventional contempt for Reagan that accompanied the nuclear freeze movement, that condemned Reagan’s deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe, his embrace of strategic nuclear defense — derided as “Star Wars,” first by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and then everywhere on the left — and, of course, opposition to Reagan’s support for the contra rebels of Nicaragua, which reached hyper-pitch as Iran-contra scandal unfolded.
“The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law — they disgrace democracy by claiming what they do, they do for democracy,” Irving has his narrator rail. “They should be in jail,” he huffs after labeling Reagan an “old geezer” and slamming him with the innuendo of Hollywood stupidity routinely traded in by anti-Reagan newspaper columnists in those days.
OWEN MEANY is a beautiful, funny novel -- I've read it once a decade, at least, since my 20s and find that I get something new out of it each time. But the Reagan hatred portions really are pretty tedious. Hewitt isn't wrong about everything.
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