At times it all seems like some sort of Bizarro World faith-versus-works argument. Liberals wind up being the ones pointing out, endlessly, that national security is provided by actual practices, not just by holding your face right. Meanwhile popinjays like Joe Biden desperately file their chins to razor-sharpness in the probably vain hope that the electorate, having sometimes demonstrated a preference for strutting phonies, will mistake them for one. And of course the fact remains, as the Poor Man never ceases to remind us: Michael Moore is fat.
One shouldn't underestimate the value of being a strutting phony, of a bit of macho swagger upping the Dem's ability to attract voters. But, one doesn't improve your party's chances by talking about how all those other non-strutting phonies are a bunch of wimps.
Go be tough guys Biden and Beinart (the latter, of course, could be very tough indeed by filling out an enlistment form). Fine by me. However, which serves our (assuming it's the same) cause more - talking about how Democrats are big wimps for being insufficiently enthusiastic about bombing whoever George Bush wants to bomb that day or pointing out that Iraq was a disaster and President "Bin Laden Was Determined to Strike memo not important" Bush was in fact asleep at the wheel on September 11 and hasn't bothered to wake up since?