Is anyone as undecided as I am about the upcoming Presidential election? It feels like I’ve been watching a political tennis match filled with faults and missed calls on what should have been out of bounds. We have to wade through all the banter and political maneuvering to uncover some facts.
What we find, though, is that neither Bush nor Kerry comes out smelling like a rose.
When it comes to the economy, neither has been brilliant. Wednesday, Kerry blasted the Bush administration by saying, “This president has created more excuses than jobs.”
Steve Schmidt, a Bush spokesman, said, “The American economy has created 1.7 million jobs in the past year.”
The Bush administration also claims that the economic downturn began during Clinton’s watch, and that Bush has actually turned it around. I don’t know if I believe that, but the economy did take a big post-9/11 hit.
Kerry is not exactly a gleaming economic pillar of hope, either. He has consistently voted for higher taxes up to what some say 350 times in his career. Although he promises to be a friend to business, he led the way in voting to approve NAFTA in 1993.
And what about the tragedy of Sept. 11? We know that a few people in the security sector knew the terrorists were planning something big. That information did not reach the people in charge in time to avert the attacks, though. The newly elected President Bush did not consider it a priority and did not actively seek out that information, even though Clinton’s security staff advised them otherwise. I’m not saying the attacks could have been prevented, but we’ll never know what would have happened if the early Bush administration had taken those warnings seriously.
The war in Iraq is another hot bed of debate, or, if you prefer, mudslinging. According to Kerry, who voted to go to war, Bush lied to the American people about the weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s connection to al-Queda. He may have also lied about his National Guard service, but who knows? Kerry could be lying about his heroic service in Vietnam, too, for that matter.
What’s worse is that the Bush administration had a very well thought out, efficient plan for getting into Iraq and getting Saddam out, but absolutely no plan for what to do with the Iraqi people afterward. There was no plan at the time of invasion for instituting democracy or how to protect the people who would be put in charge of that task. That plan is being written as they go, and every day more Americans die.
Kerry wants to dramatically reduce the U.S. troops’ strength in the newly liberated country. I agree that some other countries should help us shoulder the burden of keeping the peace, but what’s done is done. Iraq needs help at least until they get their own government up and running, and the United States is one of the only countries with the ability to do so. If we do not keep a strong presence in Iraq for now, problems in Iraq have the potential of dragging out and costing more American lives.
In a time of great tension in the Middle East, our greatest oil supplier, American scientists should be searching for an efficient, alternative energy source. However, President Bush pointed the scientists of NASA toward a manned mission to Mars. In doing so, he committed billions of dollars to come from taxpayers’ pockets.
Kerry has also said that he will increase funding for NASA, even though he endorses prizes for commercial space exploration in hopes of coaxing the private sector into space.
Their campaigns aren’t stellar either. Both Bush and Kerry are caught up in some kind of time warp. Kerry’s early campaign was hell-bent on drudging up the past. He has attacked President Bush’s military record, something that has little bearing on the present.
Bush, on the other hand, continues to make vague statements about his “plan for the future.” There is no clarification as to what that plan has to say about health care, the economy or environmental issues.
We do know one thing. Bush is committed to acting decisively to halt the threat of terrorism. Kerry wants to put minimal effort into the War on Terror and the democracy in Iraq. As each candidate continues to slide slowly toward the middle of the political spectrum in hopes of attracting voters, the American people are once again left choosing between the lesser of two evils.
Nick Thompson is a senior communication major. He can be reached at [email protected].