Well, Mark...I obviously did not give you enough credit. I am convinced of that. It is often easy to mischaracterize the voices of others in situations such as this. A fair, reasoned opinion looks like just more shrill posturing when perception is clouded by the ridiculous antics of those most intimately involved in this. I am indeed shocked by the military vote fiasco. Clearly they are willing to do anything they can to get a vote at the Goree camp. Clearly also, Gore did not learn enough from the master, slick Willie. Somehow, Bill would have come through all of this. But gore has probably destroyed any chance he has of leading the Dems in 2004. If had just kept quiet until yesterday and then walked away he could have set himself up as a principled leader willing to take charge if Bush fails. Somehow Clinton can be just as fierce but he also knows when he is beaten and can come up with a strategy to make the best of a bad situation. Somehow a very angry opposition Republican Congress and Clinton formed a synergy and they managed together to get us where we are now with so many more Americans gainfully employed than when they started fighting. I compare this to the relations of Reagan and the Democratic Congress that he fought, where Reagan pushed through his tax cuts and defense spending and the Democrats pushed through their reckless spending and we were left with a huge debt that we had to pay back at usurious interest rates. It is amazing that we have recovered from that huge mistake as well as we have.
On the Republicans, I still harbor a lingering fear of a tyranny of morally driven legislation that intrudes in my life and the lives of those I hold dear. I fear that Bush has done a great job of presenting himself as the Centerist that the American peole surely want while hiding his intentions to legislate moral issues, something that a majority of us do not want, something that I consider an intrusion. I hope that I am wrong.
On the other stuff, I think that we just have a clear difference of opinion. I think that there are facts on each side that we would both agree to. it is just a matter of how those facts are prioritized. It is interesting that two people can look at the same set of facts and come up with different conclusions. But of course, this is the strength of our system of freedoms. I assure you that my perceptions also have a deep and varied basis, not just statistics and the Internet. This is also why history is always best written after the fact. |
