What a revealing line in Richard Cohen’s column in the Washington Post about the
media-generated furor over Bush campaign ads that include images of
the President at the site of Ground Zero in New York only days
after September 11th, 2001. Cohen with a typical, and typically
unsuccessful, attempt at cleverness writes that he is happy for
Bush to take credit in the ads for his behavior after 9/11 so long
as he acknowledges his responsibility for the attacks themselves.
“Sandy Berger,” he writes, “the national security adviser under
Bill Clinton, had told Condi Rice, the national security adviser
under George W. Bush, that terrorism would be her No. 1 concern —
and yet almost 3,000 lives were lost and a gash punched into the
Pentagon and a hole left in the bottom of Manhattan Island. For
this, somehow, no one is at fault.”
Well, no one except the terrorists, I guess, and there’s no
point blaming anything on them, is there? All it takes is someone
telling you, “Hey, watch out for terrorists,” and suddenly you’re
responsible for anything terrorists may do. There was a time, not
so long ago, when sly insinuations of the administration’s guilt in
the attacks belonged to the lunatic fringe, along with Noam Chomsky
and Gore Vidal — assuming you don’t think them part of the lunatic
fringe. Then Howard Dean remarked that it was “an interesting
theory” and the floodgates were opened. Now John Kerry is saying, “I think one of the most critical
questions in front of the country is with respect to 9/11, why is
this administration stonewalling and resisting the investigation
into why we had the greatest security failure in the history of our
country and why is he also resisting having an immediate
investigation into the security failure with respect to the
intelligence in Iraq.”
Obviously, there is no hint of gentlemanliness on the part of
John Kerry to his fellow Bonesman. Any stick to beat Bush with,
that should go without saying. But did Roosevelt carry the can for
the “security failure” of Pearl Harbor? Did Wilson for the
Lusitania? Did McKinley for the Maine? Did, for
that matter, Clinton for the Cole? If a foreign power, or
even a state-like entity like al-Qaeda, is determined to mount a
surprise attack on us the chances are that they will be able to do
so are pretty good. Moreover, to treat it when it happens as merely
a lapse in security is a way of avoiding the necessity — a
necessity that Bush saw from the beginning but that Kerry still
does not see — to strike back at the enemy.
But the idea that anyone other than the perpetrators were “at
fault” is also sadly typical of our times. It didn’t just slip
Cohen’s mind that the fanatical bin-Ladenists who actually hijacked
the jets, killed the pilots, and flew the planes into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon were the ones at fault. Like other
liberals, he has simply grown accustomed to blaming things on
anyone but the obviously guilty parties. There is even a name for
the kind of “bigotry” shown by those of us who laugh at him for it.
We have, it seems, what the latest thinking in the American Trial
Lawyers Association calls “personal responsibility bias.” Like
irresponsible juries who are inclined to say that those who have
eaten, drunk, or smoked themselves into illness have brought it on
themselves, we must be educated out of our primitive superstition
in favor of individual responsibility.
According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal a
couple of months ago, the American Trial Lawyers Association
publication titled ATLA’s Litigating Tort Cases by David
A. Wenner tells us that “the personal responsibility juror …
tends to see the world with bright line rules on how people should
act. [He thinks that] people should be self-reliant, responsible,
and self-disciplined. When people act irresponsibly and are not
self-disciplined, there are consequences. People must be
accountable for their conduct.” Well, did you ever?
The Democrats, of course, have long been marching in lockstep
with the Trial Lawyers, but this is the first time it appears they
have had a real influence on Democratic foreign policy. I wonder if
Senator Kerry will now acknowledge that, just as whatever happens
to us as individuals must be the responsibility of some
deep-pocketed individual or corporation, so whatever happens to us
as a nation must be the responsibility of some Republican
president. It would certainly simplify the decision-making process
for the electorate in November.
