Eugene Volokh and one of his co-conspirators, Orin Kerr, discuss John Kerry's odd analogy between terrorism and gambling/prostitution in a series of posts that begins here. Kerr finds a possible explanation in the fact that Kerry spent some time as a prosecutor who tackled gambling related to organized crime.

I found myself thinking about that old canard to the effect that if what you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look a lot like nails. Kerry's father was a diplomat, and one of the dominant points he's been making throughout his campaign is that he would be a better diplomat than Bush is. He's also signalled that he wants to return to the "law enforcement" model for combatting terrorism.

But both of those measures were used during the 1990s, and they failed miserably. Clinton's administration treated terrorism as a law-enforcement issue, and only emboldened Al Qaeda. And I suspect that Clinton was also one of the best diplomat-Presidents in history, if the tales are true about his level of personal charm and charisma.

Kerry is looking at the problem of terrorism from the perspective of what he considers his strong suits, rather than the perspective of what will work, and he wants to return to the strategies that didn't work in the 1990s.

And better than 45% of the U.S. population appears unable to figure this out. Truly amazing.

Posted by: Attila at 08:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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