I’m so depressed about the election today. I see a candidate who has no clear strategy for dealing with a smear campaign he should have known about for months, a smear campaign that, amazingly, nearly half the population gullibly believes has some merit, even though it’s a pack of lies. I see a guy who is thrown softballs on “The Daily Show” and can’t seem to string his responses into coherent sentences — even though they’re responses he’s had plenty of time to think about.
Has Kerry given any thought to actually winning the election?
One ray of hope is that the campaign has replaced some people in top staff positions with two former Clinton guys:
…at the peak of the Swiftee frenzy, the campaign finally added two old Clinton pros to help out. Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart will now serve as the traveling press secretary, while ex-Clinton adviser Joel Johnson will run the campaign’s war room, a position aides say had never been clearly defined. After the toughest stretch of the campaign thus far, the news was greeted like a breath of fresh air at Kerry headquarters. “It’s like the adults are coming in to babysit the kids,” says one staffer. “I’ve been in meetings where I think, ‘What the fuck experience do any of us have with this stuff?’ These guys are adults.”
I’m so frustrated with Kerry, and I don’t even know if he’ll be a good president if he wins. Unfortunately, one of the realities of modern American presidential politics, whether you’re running for the White House or actually in it, is that an excellent media operation is essential. Bush has an excellent media operation; Kerry doesn’t. Bush’s people get it. Kerry’s people don’t.
I don’t even know what the point of the Democratic Party is anymore, except to oppose the Republicans. You know what? If not for the neocons and the social conservatives, I might not hate the Republican Party so much. If there were a Northeastern Republican Party, I might even vote for it. Maybe the northeast can secede. Come on, who’s with me?
I wonder what qualities my ideal president would have. He’d be an excellent thinker and an excellent communicator. He’d have policies based on an empirical view of the world around him, and…
Well, okay. Let me ask myself this. What’s the biggest concern to me on the national or world stage right now? I’m a smart guy with an advanced degree and a decent job. If the economy continues to be the way it is, it won’t affect me too much. Furthermore, I don’t think a president has much control over the day-to-day economy. Except that if you’re going to cut taxes and create huge spending increases (see: new Medicare program, the costs of which were intentionally hidden), you’re going to increase the deficit, which means that someday all that debt will have to be paid off. I don’t completely understand how national debt works — who do we borrow the money from? when do we have to pay it back? I don’t know — but I’m pretty sure we owe all that money to some entity or entities. That money’s going to come from us.
The passive-aggressive part of me wants to say, fine — just let them keep doing what they’re doing. At least that way, we’ll be proven right. Except that it will probably take a few decades for that to happen.
That’s not my biggest concern, though.
There’s gay rights. I want same-sex couples to be able to get the same legal rights and protections for their relationships that opposite-sex couples can get.
That’s a really big concern for me, but not the biggest.
Honestly? My biggest concern right now is that I don’t want to get killed in a terrorist attack. Or hurt in one. Or see my favorite places become inhabitable due to one.
What are the best ways to make a terrorist attack unlikely?
Have an excellent intelligence structure (which we don’t have).
This doesn’t seem that hard to me. It’s certainly not something a president does by himself. But given that Bush opposed the Commission and a Department of Homeland Security, I fail to see how we should trust him more than Kerry on this.
Capture the people who have already attacked us (which we haven’t done).
How hard should this be? It’s not necessarily easy, but given that Bush and his team have ignored reality for the last three years (Saddam had no connection to 9/11, so why did we make him a priority?), they’ve made it a lot harder. All a president has to do is hire the right people, people who know about military strategy. After all, are we to believe that Bush himself is a grand military strategist who told the military what caves in Afghanistan to search? No. He’s a guy who drove an oil company into the ground. All Kerry needs to do is set the tone and hire the right people, people who don’t have blinders on. (I’m worried about him being able to set the tone. But who knows.)
Try to bring stability to those parts of the world that breed terrorism (which we haven’t done).
Bush sucks on this. Since routing the Taliban, the Bush people have let Afghanistan slide back into chaos. And Iraq isn’t any more stable than it used to be. It’s less stable, in fact. We need a “more sensible war on terror,” as Kerry says; instead, the past three years have been nonsensical.
I’m not sure about this last one, but:
Show potential terrorists the high costs of attacking us. Show that we’re not afraid to kick your ass and your country’s ass if you do something to us.
Bush has done this, although, uh, groups clearly are still planning to attack us, so I don’t see how the bluster has helped. Perhaps this one works better with nations, such as the USSR (mutually assured destruction). At any rate, it’s not as important as the first three points.
And of course there are some things that have nothing to do with who’s president. Who stopped the shoe-bomber? Not the president or anyone in his administration, but a bunch of passengers on an airplane who noticed what was going on.
Basically, fighting terrorism doesn’t seem all that hard.
Now, how did this all come up again? Oh, yeah. I was talking about the most important point thing to me in this election. It’s terrorism, and I don’t see what’s wrong with giving Kerry a chance to fight it.
But he’s still a sucky communicator and campaigner, so I’m still depressed about the election.
“It’s terrorism, and I don’t see what’s wrong with giving Kerry a chance to fight it.” —— interesting point, but I think for folks who share your view thats it’s the most important issue, a reasonable argument can be made for NOT changing presidents at this time. Many believe that the period from Bush’s election to 9/11 is what gave these guys (terrorists) that window of opportunity to hit us. And do we really need another Commander-In-Chief-In-Training??
Great post and I share many of your feelings, but I’m with bj, given all the variables I think changing the Commander-In-Chief is dangerous, especially given Kerry’s apparent incompetence in running a campaign and his lack of a record to campaign on from the day he left Vietnam ’til today.
By that logic, we should amend the Constitution so Bush can serve as president indefinitely, since the threat of terrorism is never ever going to go away. And “many believe” doesn’t say much. “Many believe” lots of things.
And, Mitch, what exactly did George Bush do with his life before taking on one of the weakest governships in the nation?
Vote for a Republican?
In what alternate universe?
The only terrorist I fear is George W. Bush.
Don’t change the president because of terrorism? Lame thinkin’. George Bush hasn’t made the United States much safer. Instead of focusing on Bin laden’s terrorists he sent us into Iraq and made a bunch more. All of these elevated terror levels, why are we even having these if Bush has been so “successful”? I don’t feel any safer today than I did about three years ago.
I should clarify my view – i wasn’t saying that I was against changing Commander in Chief – i just felt that it was a reasonable postion, probably more in the abstract than when speaking about THIS particular president, IF your major concern is terrorism or fighting a war (we are still in a war in Iraq, right?) And even without that clarification, I was saying that people may VOTE based on that belief, not that is was such an imperative that we should suspend with voting and just make George our new King. As I mentioned in a previous comment on your page – i think Kerry has failed to make a convincing argument that he can do a better job. That George isn’t good enough doesn’t seem to be enough to get people to vote for the other guy. Just remember, over 90 million eligible voters DID NOT vote in 2000 – and I think KERRY has so far failed to connect to any of them. Believe me, I would like Bush to be gone in however many days your website says are left to his presidency; I am thoroughly disappointed with Kerry’s efforts at making that happen. IF Kerry wins, it will because of the extreme efforts of other determined people.
Don’t read too much into this, but it does concern me that a fear is driving your political perspective. I’m not American, so I’m not ‘in’ the situation over there with regard to 9/11 and the national psyche, but don’t you have to sit back for a second and think about how orchestrated your fear is? If its driving you to re-elect a president that has thrown anti-American sentiment to become a global anthem (I don’t condone it, I simply observe it), among muslim and non-muslim alike in many cases, you’ve got to wonder how much safer you’ll be with someone like that continuing in office. Believe me when I say the world will soften up to America much more easily with Bush out of office. In my humble opinion, Bush is preaching to a very gullible audience if he’s convincing people he’s the answer to making America/the world a safer place.
I too am depressed about this election, and about the future of our country. Bush is quite likely the worst president the country has ever had, and his administration the most corrupt. Unless you’re a billionaire or the CEO of a favored donor corporation, he has nothing positive in his record of accomplishments to merit support. Indeed, he can offer only fear and terror to ordinary, non-billionaire voters. Despite his claims that he and conservatives are “optimistic,” his campaign offers only sleazy false attacks on his opponents (just as he deployed sleazy lies in support of both his War and his various initiatives that sell out the country to wealthy corporate donors). And the administration is filled with demagogues like Cheney and Ashcroft who clearly despise openness, separation of powers, and civil liberties because they get in the way of their exercise of unlimited power for themselves and on behalf of their favored donors.
Even more depressing is the fact that the Democrats have only the weak, ineffectual, lackluster, uncharismatic, pitiful political creature called John Kerry to offer as an alternative. He is only slightly less undeserving of the office than the even more pathetic creatures who ran against him in the primaries. He is committing the very same serious error that Al Gore committed– he is letting the Republicans define him, his party, and the election itself. Like Gore, Kerry (and his advisors) is too pavid to react properly to the Republicans’ well-financed sleazy smear attacks. His campaign is so fearful of being attacked for attacking back that he lets the Republicans defecate all over him and paint him into a “damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t” corner. At least Gore had a powerful asset in the form of Bill Clinton, who the Republican sleaze-meisters intimidated him into completely forgoing. Kerry hasn’t even got that. Clearly, few if any voters actually SUPPORT Kerry; they side with him only because he is isn’t Bush– and, weak as he is, he can’t possibly be as bad as Bush. Yet upon his woefully inadequate shoulders rests the fate of the United States as a constitutional republic, as opposed to the fascist cryptocracy that Bush and his junta lust after establishing.
But Bush’s lies, slander, and deceit seem to be working, if you believe the latest polls. Kerry just stands by and lets them defecate all over him. And Bush manipulates the Christian/Puritan streak inherent in more Americans than merely the fundamentalist evangelical minority. By dangling shiny distractions like the issues of abortion and “saving the institution of marriage,” he can shore up support among the legions of Christian sheep who are too stupid to realize that same-sex marriage ISN’T the threat that’s about to destroy America (as well as those who believe that letting Bush turn American into a fascist cryptocracy modeled after third-world Banana Republics really will keep them safe from Evil).
It seems that the electorate is every bit as polarized as it was four years ago. It could well be exactly the same “statistical tie” as it was then, with the outcome decided by whichever inept state electoral system can amplify the noise into a “victory.” It could even yet again be decided by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. By running a smear campaign that intentionally obscures reality, Bush is presumably hoping to turn out enough loyal Christian knee-jerkers to produce whatever tiny margin of victory he needs.
If Bush, Kerry, and Gore are the best our electoral system can produce at the beginning of the 21st century, perhaps our constitutional republic really deserves to fail, and the United States replaced with the fascist junta of Bushi America.
Tinman, we have to choose between the two men, both of whom are imperfect. The question is: Go with the devil you know, who will stop at nothing to keep you safe or roll the dice on the pacifist, who instead of running on his 20 year Senate record had to jump all the way back to 4 mos. in Vietnam?
And yes I know Bush didn’t do much before he was governor, but now we have his 6 years there and four years in office to judge him on, just has we should judge Kerry not on Vietnam, but on his 20 years in the Senate or maybe even his two years as lieutenant governor under Michael Dukakis. Either of those is far more relevent than Vietnam.
I highly recommend reading this:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3127865
People aren’t voting for Kerry, they’re voting against Bush. When I encounter a Kerry supporter these days, which I do constantly since I live and work in Hollywood, I quickly ask, “What three policies of Kerry’s do you support and what do you think was his greatest achievment in the Senate?” Nobody has yet been able to answer the question. Their faces contort and they frequently explode at me, “HE’S NOT GEORGE FUCKIN’ BUSH!”
That’s not an idea, that’s emotion, and emotionally driven enterprises usually fail.
I dont agree with the thinking that ” hell he’s already there whats the worst that can happen?” . Thats just stupidity, and for the record , the way bush acts and has refused to take responsibility for when hes screwed up or been wrong goes to show that he himself is still commander-in-cheif in training. Getting hit by another serious terrorist attack like that within the next ten years is as likely as me steping outside on this sunny ass day and getting struck by lighting , people will always hate america there is nothing qwe can do , we will always be targets for terrorism , there are more important things to worry about in our own country , like the economy for instance. Hey I’m with the writer of ths article one hundred percent when he mentioned seceding, I’m sick of the world thinking we are all a bunch of country bumpkins like the jack ass in the oval office. I’m so pissed about the election and that we couldnt find a better candidate to go against him , Kerry our his campaign managers or someone must have been paid off.
Oh , and the only reason we are still at war is because Bush wants us to be , for simple political gain , and I’ll bet anyone my store and my house that when the proper amount of time has gone by he’ll actually try to get osama and succeed, and say “see I did it” and give that stupid little laugh of his. ( I picture him laughing with a high pitch little laugh and his head bobbing back and forth really fast when he isnt in the public eye, like some evil villain or something, LOL)