On Nov. 2, Americans will go to the polls to cast their votes for president and other offices.
Over the last two months, major newspapers across the country have endorsed their candidates of choice. Predictably, most have for John Kerry. As someone who reads every newspaper from the National Rational Online to the Washington Post on a daily basis, I can say with certainty that newspaper endorsements are a futile exercise of literary expression.
I have never heard a person say, “Gosh, after that ringing New York Times endorsement, I think that I am going to vote for that person.”
Therefore, I will save you the traditional fluff column and spare you from a copy and paste article of support. Instead, I am going to write an article about the “Things You Hate About George W. Bush and His Domestic Policies.” I will explain why you are wrong and how his policies are generally right.
One common criticism is that Bush is too overtly religious for public office. When Bush and John Ashcroft took the oath of office, many extreme church-state seperationists went into a state of hysteria at the prospects of evangelicals taking over the government. This was offensive to me as a Christian. Bush’s religion is one reason I admire the president. He plainly said Jesus is his inspiration and challenged the notion that freedom of religion is OK, just not in public.
He strongly believes that we should embrace faith-based organizations which feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and protect the parentless. This is why his community initiatives end the discrimination against people of faith.
Another common criticism centers around those darn tax cuts for the rich. In the summer of 2000, our economy started to slip. Then a new president took over. Recognizing a problem, the current administration used budget surplus funds to finance a tax cut and stimulus package before our economy slipped into a depression. Bush firmly believed that all taxpayers deserve to control their own money. A budget surplus implies that the government has overcharged the citizenry in taxes. Our economy has now improved, and it took more than rhetoric to accomplish that.
Another criticism is that the deficit is out of control. Reagan said, “Government can be like a newborn infant: Have an insatiable appetite at one end and total irresponsibility at the other.”
Bush has been labeled the big spending president. Spending should be brought under control in the next four years unless extraordinary events dictate otherwise. In light of this, I still believe that moderate deficit spending is a good thing when trying to stimulate an economy in recession, and it appears to have worked. The deficit spending has gone to fund two wars, homeland security, and the tax cuts and a prescription drug benefit.
Why is the president cutting Pell Grants and not supporting primary and secondary education? The answer is that Pell Grants have not been cut. Funding has been increased 47 percent since 2001.
As for lower education, many Republicans over the years have taken the belief that education is an issue for the states. Bush decided to take on “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in our schools. Someone had to get the ball rolling on improving education. Bush has taken the past 30 years’ failure of education head-on with No Child Left Behind, which demands accountability and improvements.
The final criticism is that Bush has ruined Social Security. Many Democrats have said we should have used the budget surplus for funding Social Security well into the 2070s. Bush had to choose between fail-safing Social Security for a limited time or improving our economy. If we had saved that money in Social Security, we could have been well on the brink of a depression by now. It doesn’t make sense to have billions of dollars sitting around while people are losing their jobs. Social Security will be paid to those who contribute but we need to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their money in the stock market. Bush believes that people make better decisions for themselves than the government does.
Seek out the facts and you will realize that Bush has risen to the occasion after all the adversity that we have gone through. After you come to that realization, you will feel obliged to vote for Bush.
Edward Sanders is a sophomore political science major. He can be reached at [email protected].