The newspapers and sunday morning talk shows are crying foul over Cheney’s campaign lines yesterday about where the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein might have ended up if a President Kerry been in charge during the 80’s and 90’s rather than a Reagan or a Bush.

That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable line of extrapolation – why the “low blow” whine from the press and Kerryites?

Kerry has time and time again pointed to the fact (especially during the debates) that this election is about two men with widely different philosophies on governing at home and abroad. No one questions that Bush and Kerry have weltanschauungs at almost polar extremes – and both candidates like to point this out. I guess you’re just supposed to leave that there and not apply those world views to the actual world?

History provides us the only laboratory records of the rather inexact science of foreign affairs and strategy. So, when Cheney goes to record book and engages in some well informed empirical speculation – now widely accepted by even liberal academic historians – that the decisions to pressure the Soviets in the 80’s and stand against Saddam in 1990 resulted in….well,…results…what’s the issue? The USSR didn’t crumble by accident and Saddam didn’t leave Kuwait of his own accord.

Decisions matter. A few hundred men and women in positions of power and influence in the 80’s and 90’s were able to take a position on those rather binary issues. Kerry was one of those. He not only chose paths that were definitively not on “the right side of history” (to use a Clinton phrase), but he often led the opposition.

The world would be different if Kerry or anyone else had been in charge. History turns on strange things – caprice, perception, personality, and the decisions of leaders. Cheney had every right to reasonably speculate about the difference in the outcome of national policy given that he was judging Kerry as a public leader who has a record of his decisions at those times. It might be different if this were Howard Dean or someone who had no position in the debates of the time. Even then it strikes me that extrapolating a philosophy towards policy decisions is not beyond the pale.

(Unfortunately, John McCain chose this morning to side with the pundits and dismiss the whole things as overheated rhetoric of campaigns playing to their bases. Joe Biden, sitting opposite McCain on ABC’s This Week, actually supported his candidate – rather than himself. Oh well.)

In any case – No Harm, No Foul – Bush and Cheney should bear down on this line of reasoning and drive it home.