Do you REALLY think John Kerry, an individual who obviously will say or do anything to get elected, will make a better president than George Bush?
Yes, primarily because I think it is tough to do worse than Bush. I've listed my many issues with Bush plenty of times, so no use going into them again.
I don't really even know that much about Kerry (I live outside the US, so I miss most of the TV campaign stuff), but the main critiques I hear are that he changes his mind and has an extremely liberal voting record in the senate.
I imagine that changing your mind should be standard practice for a senator over the course of 15+ years given all the trade-offs and different votes required to function in the senate. And the main reason I think he changes his mind a lot is just because the Bush campaign says it over and over again - they never give me meaty examples other than this one: "e voted for the Iraq war, and then voted against funding the troops". Well everyone voted for the war - the idea was to give the president total authority to do what he thought best, and was voted for on the assumption Bush would do a good job with that authority. He hasn't. And there were some complicating issues surrounding the funding bill and as I understand it Kerry's no vote was more of a statement of protest against those issues when he knew the bill would pass anyway. That doesn't seem bad to me at all except with the GPO campaign spins it. And I think George's inability to change his mind is worse than Kerry' supposed frequency of doing so. If something doesn't work, you change your mind and try something different - this is how most of us live our lives.
Of course I'm not saying I want George to change his mind about every lifestyle decision he's made if he gets re-elected - we might wind up with him snorting coke and getting drunk at all the diplomatic balls and whatnot.
As for having Kerry an extremely liberal voting record, I don't know how that jives with always changing your mind (it sounds like the opposite), but I have some very conservative views on economics, welfare, crime and liberal views on abortion, gun control, education so I can't win 100% no matter which party gets elected.
I don't think George Bush is very smart or works very hard, and he has very limited ability to work with the international community. Getting rid of Saddam was great, but the post-Saddam phase of the Iraqi situation has been handled with complete incompetence. Therefore I think George has had his chance at the wheel, and its turn to let someone else drive for a while.
How about you - do you think this administration has done a good or bad job with Iraq since the end of Major Combat Operations? If so, why (what could have gone worse??)?
America needs to be strong, and Americans need to be free. I get the sense George wants himself to be strong, and for Americans to follow him (without question because he is a "war president!!"). I don't want to follow a C student from Yale that likes to take vacation rather than work on complicated domestic and international policy.
Elroy |
