Seems like we've got a whole host of issues bundled together here. To get back to missile defense, communicating this objective in a balanced and effective manner is a real challenge, which GWB has not entirely mastered (Reagan, the "Great Communicator," had trouble with this as well). But even though I'm not a big fan of Bush, I do agree with him that we should be putting some effort into exploring the viability of defensive systems, rather than just relying on our good old "mutual assured destruction" strategy. No, missile defense isn't the answer to all potential dangers, but that doesn't mean there's no value in it. I think our government should be working towards this objective.

We should remember that things like this never work at the conceptual and early design stages, so the fact that we don't have a pre-packaged system ready to go does not mean there's no hope for it. Unfortunately, politics requires people to express complete confidence in their ideas, otherwise they are at a rhetorical disadvantage with regard to the opposing politicians expressing complete confidence in THEIR ideas. We're probably stuck with adversarial politics to a large extent, but let's not kid ourselves that this is the best way to get to the truth of matters like this.