Jane Galt is still debating who to vote for. Her perspective:
From the desk of Jane Galt:
Who? Who? Who?
Still haven't made up my mind. And hte more I meditate on the matter, the less I can work up any emotional interest in which man occupies the White House for the next four years. I definitely prefer Laura Bush to THK, but that's not helping much.
I'll probably have more questions for supporters of both candidates up this weekend. Meanwhile, some thoughts:
I agree with Jonathan Rauch entirely:
There is nothing wrong with Kerry's senatorial "flip-flops." Maneuvering is what senators do. More disturbing has been his irresolution on Iraq since becoming a presidential candidate. Most disturbing of all is that, with only days to go before the election, I still don't feel I have a handle on what he is really all about. Perhaps Kerry is the scion of Dukakism, the doctrine that the election is about competence, not ideology. But Kerry is running for president, not city manager.
I don't believe he is an empty suit. I just wish I knew what was inside the suit. I can understand why my father fears that Kerry might be captured by the Left.
Bush is a dynamic leader, but he lacks what a president most needs: guardrails. Kerry has guardrails, but where is the road? A dispiriting choice.
The Kerry supporters whose opinions I most value have so far basically admitted that their man has a lacklustre Senate record, has been wrong on pretty much every major foriegn policy issue he's confronted, has a foreign policy team composed pretty much of the back bench from the Clinton years, and cares little enough about terrorism that every one of his votes since 9/11 has been too politically opportunistic to enable us to divine what, if anything, he actually thinks. Their argument boils down to two things:
1) The world has changed since 9/11
This is true, but not useful, since the central question is whether or not John Kerry has changed. The burden of proof is largely on Mr Kerry, and he blew it with his opportunistic votes. I would be a lot more comfortable voting for him if it weren't for his, yes, flip-flop on the supplemental; Kerry supporters can spin all they want, but all the people I know who worry about this stuff for a living agree that it was pure politics. The fact that he felt entitled to play politics with this worries me at least as much as the fact that I don't know what the hell he stands for, except election.
2) John Kerry would have to be pretty $%@! awful to be worse than Bush
I find this almost, but not quite, sufficient. Everyone who tells me this pretty much hated Bush from the moment he entered office; even though I voted for Gore (albeit with about as much thought as I put into choosing a new shade of lipstick), I lack the fine edge of hatred that enables me to discern otherwise invisible shreds of rectitude and intelligence in his opponent.
Bush supporters have been equally unconvincing. No one has offered any reasonable argument that Iraq is not a cluster [expletive deleted]. And if it was a cluster-[censored], then the blame has to be laid at the Adminsitration's door. Either it was inevitably a boondoggle, in which case Bush shouldn't have started this, or it became a boondoggle, in which case we need someone more competent in charge.
Most disappointing is the failure of Kerry supporters to offer one of the two examples that I asked for which could easily, by themselves, move me into the Kerry camp:
1) A large American government programme, other than welfare, which has been repealed after it was found to cause bigger problems than it solved, or otherwise not function properly
2) A foriegn conflict, on the scale of the current conflict (NOT one of the World Wars) that has had more damaging impact on the power that waged it than, say, the destruction of the medical technology industry would be. Such damage should be concrete, rather than nebulous: i.e. I know we're all mad that the Spanish American War launched the American Century, but the "damage" from the conflict is a little too spiritual to answer my question satisfactorily, especially since we're already well down the road of Dollar Imperialism. And the conflict should have created this damage without the interference of another major crisis, i.e. Russia's czars may have fallen because of WWI, but the rot was there for years before. On the other hand, a conflict that ultimately resulted in a bigger and uglier conflict would be more than fine, provided you can give me some decent parallels with the current situation.
Instead, Kerry supporters have harangued me about my views on entitlement spending, particularly health care, even though I specifically stated that I was not interested in such a debate, and none of my interlocutors so far have been even half as well-versed on the subject as I, in my hamf-fisted and amateurish way, am, making their arguments particularly unconvincing. Do y'all want my vote or not?
Has no one provided me with this information because there aren't good examples? (In the case of #1, I'm almost certain that there aren't, but am willing to stand corrected). Or did it get lost in the rush to castigate me for the heartless wretch I most assuredly am? Anyway, it's important enough that I wanted to give you another chance: provide me with an example of one or the other, or better yet both, and you have a very good chance of swinging me to your side.
Right now, apart from the small chance of a thermonuclear device detonated in an American city, it seems to me that the biggest threat to America is not foriegn policy at all [don't you know we're at war?--ed. Yes, I do, but it's a smallish war. Absent nuclear or smallpox attacks, it doesn't pose an existential threat to us, and I am not clear, despite the best efforst of my interlocutors, that Bush has made us either more or less safe from those two types of attacks, since the bottleneck to those sorts of spectacular operations would seem to be not The Will, but The Way.]
The biggest threat is failing to deal with budget and other problems inherent in the demographic surge towards an older population, until the problem deals with itself, catastrophically. The second biggest threat is screwing up the health care system so that we don't get innovative new drugs and equipment. And the third is running out of oil and/or screwing up the climate with our fossil fuel consumption. Kerry's better, marginally, on #3, though I hate his top-down, market-phobic approach; Bush is better, by a bigger margin, on #2, and while I'd like to believe that Bush means it about Social Security privatisation, I've been waiting with bated breath for four years, and frankly, I'm turning blue.
This is a window of opportunity! Convince me that Bush, even if he screwed up in Iraq, won't do so going forward! Convince me that Kerry's terrible domestic agenda has no chance of passage! Convince me that Bush really, truly means it this time about Social Security! Convince me that a bad American foreign policy will hurt Americans more than bad domestic policy! Convince me that you know what Kerry's actually thinking, and it shouldn't scare the bejeesus out of me! You have that rare breed, the undecided voter, sitting in your lap, begging you to make up her mind, and she's even told you exactly what she wants to hear! Surely there's one fair prince among you who holds the key to unlock my weary heart?
Posted by Jane Galt at October 22, 2004 03:41 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links
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