Hitchens For Bush? Hitchens For Kerry?

In the pages of the Nation once again, Christopher Hitchens endorses Bush (slightly). I was all set to write a fisking of his piece in the manner of this post, but he upset my plans before I could get around to doing it.

At Slate, Christopher Hitchens endorses Kerry (objectively but not subjectively).

How could he have changed his mind in the span of a week? Was it the fiasco at the al QaQaa explosives depot that set him over the edge? If so, how could that have done the trick, and not, say, Abu Ghraib?

In any case, I want to say a few words about what's wrong with Hitchens' endorsement piece for Bush. Basically, Hitchens is committing a category error, and not in a neutral, purely accidental way, but in a very specific, disingenuous, self-serving way. His case for supporting the Republican candidate is that he can tenably uphold the anti-Kissingerian ideology of a small faction within the neoconservative fold (i.e. the Wolfowitz faction). He thinks, conversely, that the national Democratic ticket is impaled by and condemnable because of the support it receives from fringe elements on the left. See the problem? Of course you do. It's simply dishonest to cherrypick one small fraction of one candidate's supporters to identify with and then denounce his opponent on the basis of guilty involuntary association.

In his Slate endorsement, it looks like Hitchens has become conscious of the glaring fallacy in his Nation piece. In short, he concedes (without admitting error, natch), that it's good in general that Senator Kerry has repudiated the anti-war immediate withdrawal faction of the left, and that it would be good for the Democrats to take responsibility for the broader war against Islamism.

I want to say some more about why Hitchens is wrong to place such faith in Wolfowitz, and why Wolfowitzian neoconservatism is not a repudiation of Kissinger, but a backhanded embrace of him. I'll save it for another post.