The Lesser of Two Evils: Thoughts on the 2004 Presidential Election (Golden Ram II)

Quick Westmoor, when’s the 2004 primary election? Nov 2nd? That’s still 5 months from now. Yet it seems like the Kerry vs. Bush war has been going on longer than the occupation of Iraq. From observance and a few polls, it seems as if the general consensus (among Westmoor students and faculty, at least) is that Bush is the worst warmongering leader since Darth Vader got his respirator. In a poll of Westmoor students, most selected Democratic candidate John Kerry to be President (see poll on page 11). When initially asked who the Democratic Presidential candidate was, however, an alarming percent couldn’t even identify Kerry, and more than half of the students admitted that they really didn’t know anything about John Kerry besides the fact that he was the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. President. The overwhelming reason, then, for the large number of Kerry votes (55%, compared to a paltry 7% for Bush)? A desperate desire to get President Bush out of office, regardless of his replacement. As one Westmoor student puts it, “…it doesn’t really matter who’s going to replace Bush. We could replace the President with a monkey and I think that the country would be in a better place, and our head of state would still look the same. [laughs] Seriously though, with what Bush has done to the economy and the whole Iraq thing, I don’t think we can allow him another four years with running the country.” According to our polls, Westmoor students support that sentiment; 69% agree that Bush should not win another term, no matter who his replacement is.

Admittedly, Bush has not been the greatest of all presidents. The war in Iraq was, at the least, a miscalculation of Iraqi resistance and global response by military intelligence and the Bush administration. Politicians have been playing the blame game with the Iraq War and the response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, setting up the utterly pointless 9/11 commission, not to mention Dick Cheney’s appalling “People who disagree with the war in Iraq don’t want Iraqis to be free” speech. While you can blame whoever you want, it really doesn’t matter; we’re in a pickle with the situation in Iraq, and just blaming the Bush administration is not going to solve anything. John Kerry may be opposed to the war, but that’s not going to help us if he wins the election; he can’t go back in time to reverse the war, and completely withdrawing from Iraq would be a disastrous mistake in the long-term. Imagine: U.S. troops would pull out, leaving the British and other coalition forces to fend for themselves, the new government fails miserably, plunging Iraq into an uncontrollable civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis. It would be a permanent scar against world opinion of the United States. No one, not Bush, Kerry, nor any other candidate, has a miracle solution at this point. At least until John Kerry or another candidate forms a promising, specific proposal about what to do, I’d go with the Commander-in-Chief who’s been running the war for the past year over plunging an unfamiliar face into the Presidential hot seat and saying, “We’ve got a problem with this war. Fix it.”

And what about the economy? Utter mess since President Bush came into office, right? In March 2004, the trade deficit (net worth of U.S. imports and exports) reached an all time high at $46 billion. The federal deficit, (difference between how much the government takes in and how much it spends) was a record $375 billion in 2003, and is projected to mount even higher this year. During the Clinton administration, 22 million new jobs were “created,” while so far, during President Bush’s term, 2-3 million jobs have been “lost.” Sounds bad? Maybe, but there’s no imminent disaster looming. On the contrary, the record trade deficit in March signals economic prosperity, showing that the U.S. has the resources to buy and import goods from foreign markets. “The economy is shifting into high gear and we’re vacuuming up goods from around the world to support that growth,” says Joel Naroff, president at Naroff Economic Advisors. However, it is also correct to point out that such a high rate of imported goods makes the U.S. economy more susceptible to changes in foreign markets.

Critics of President Bush have also been quick to point out the spiraling federal deficit, in which government spending has far outpaced revenue. A budget deficit is not a good thing; the government must borrow money through bonds to support its spending, but Americans, especially young voters whose memories don’t reach back beyond President Clinton’s second term, have been spoiled by the record surpluses during the Clinton administration. What many people fail to realize is that a budget deficit is nothing new; the United States has been in a budget deficit for almost all of the past 60 years; before the Clinton era, the last budget surplus was in 1969, under Lyndon B. Johnson, 35 years ago, and I think that most of us can agree that the U.S. has met with considerable economic prosperity thus far, despite the deficit.

And last of all, how much does the President actually affect the economy? Critics of the President point out that Bill Clinton and Al Gore created many jobs during their administration, but many jobs were lost during Bush’s term. But, as Charles Krauthammer puts it in Time (May 10, 2004 “Where Presidents Have No Power”), it’s unfair to give Presidents much credit or blame for the economy. “Clinton did not create jobs. Bill Gates did. Andy Grove did. Jeff Bezos did. In fact, they created an industry… Clinton deserves credit for not getting in the way.” Krauthammer raises the point that the President doesn’t have control over the economy. Much of the economic growth in the Clinton era can be attributed to, among other things, the economic boom brought on by the emergence of the computer and internet (the aforementioned industry, in case you didn’t recognize the names), the end of the Gulf War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which solidified the U.S. as the lone superpower and allowed it to divert resources from military spending. Likewise, the recession of the past few years cannot be blamed on Bush, but on things like the Internet bust and the 9/11 attacks that caused the near-collapse of the airline industry. The United States is a democratic, free capitalist system; government control of the economy borders upon Communism. The government cannot change economy, only nudge it in the desired direction.

Honesty has been a big issue in both campaigns. All the talk about weapons of mass destruction (remember those?) has been beaten thoroughly, and most will agree that the information given to the American public by the Bush Administration was misleading and at least somewhat false and exaggerated. But how about Kerry? On April 22, Kerry spoke at an Earth Day rally in Houston, Texas, advocating higher fuel-efficiency standards. Asked if he owned a notoriously gas-guzzling Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV), Kerry at first answered no, but later admitted that yes, it was in fact a Chevy Suburban that was parked at his vacation home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Later questioned by a reporter, Kerry answered, “I don’t own an SUV. My family does.” Kerry has also claimed that he has heard from foreign leaders that they had wanted Bush out of office, yet could not come up with any evidence to support his claim. And who could possibly forget his “I actually voted for that bill (to appropriate $87 billion for U.S. operations in Afghanistan/Iraq) before I voted against it,” debacle. Already, John Kerry has shown his willingness to bend the truth, put forth information with no factual support, and at times, flat-out lie in an attempt to save face or please his audience. Sound familiar?

What’s most disturbing about Kerry’s campaign, however, is that Kerry feels compelled to deceive about things that don’t really matter. He owns an SUV, yet he supports fuel-efficiency standards. Yes, that makes him a bit of a hypocrite, but Kerry can’t just suck it up and admit that he’s not the perfect poster child of the environment, which many politicians, including President Bush, aren’t anyway. See, technically, it’s not even his SUV, it’s his family’s. (But I wonder who came up with the money to buy the Suburban, along with the Land Rover and the two Jeep Cherokees that he, oh I’m sorry, his “family” also owns.) And it’s obvious that Kerry drummed up his “foreign leaders” claim with no real backing to support it. Kind of like what Bush told us about Iraq, isn’t it?

The problem thus far with Kerry is this: regardless of what his policies are and what he’ll do if he gets into office, he is a horrible communicator. Take, for example, the controversy concerning a 1971 war protest, in which, at the time, Kerry said that he threw away his Vietnam War medals, but later claimed that, in fact, he threw away his ribbons, not his medals. Did it really matter whether he threw his medals, or his ribbons? No, yet Kerry somehow got himself embroiled in an inflated controversy over it. Some of it was the media, yes, but George W. Bush has said innumerous incompetent statements over the past 3½ years, and I don’t believe that all of them combined amounted to the flak that Kerry got that one week. Instead, Kerry got caught up, at first saying they were medals, and then, realizing that he was too far to the left in his anti-war stance, tried to appear more moderate by saying that they were just ribbons. Kerry was not able to just stand firm in his belief and state, “Look, it really doesn’t matter what I threw. The point is that I didn’t agree with the war in Vietnam, and I did what I did as a sign of protest, no qualms, no regrets.” Does anybody recall those Peter Jennings interviews on ABC World News? Kerry could not stop rambling on in his answers, and getting ultra-defensive and interrupting while Jennings was trying to ask a question. This was an interview on national television with an impartial news anchor, not a debate with an extreme right-wing Republican opponent.

Over the course of his campaign trail, John Kerry has been through controversy concerning whether or not he owns a type of car, what he threw over a fence 33 years ago, and a confusing “I voted both ways” claim. President Bush has made many horrible decisions concerning the economy, the environment, and the entire situation in Iraq, and has no doubt alienated many foreign leaders. Yet, Bush had been leading the polls until very recently, and in many parts of the country is still extremely popular, because he has one key aspect: charisma. He doesn’t pick fights with everything and everyone, he doesn’t have to be right all the time, and he’s strong and stands by his beliefs, however miscalculated and unpopular they may be.

And that’s the distinct difference between George Bush and John Kerry; each embodies only one of the two principal qualities that make up an ideal President – leadership and sound decision making. If Kerry emerges as the victor in November, and has developed some sound policies and proposals by then, he’ll enter his Presidency as a legislator. He’ll be great at setting new plans and laws and making decisions, which is not a whole lot different from what he did as a Senator. On the other hand, President Bush was a horrible decision-maker. He plunged the United States into a needless and baseless war, but stayed strong and firm in his belief, instead of saying “Whoops I was wrong, this war’s a failure.” In doing that, he preserved America’s confidence and morale. After the terrorist attacks on September 11^th, President Bush acted swiftly with military action against Al Qaida, and restored faith in a time of tragedy and turmoil. George Bush may have been a lousy legislator, but he is a leader. He won the faith of many people, and during a time of war, united the people far better than a typical president would have placed in the same situation (Vietnam War, perhaps). If Kerry is elected President, he may make good decisions, but I’m afraid he won’t win anybody’s support; he’ll always appear distant, never gaining the support of the general public, like he is now. What’s more important, having a President who is a good legislator, or a President who is a good leader? That, ultimately, is for the individual voter to decide.

And that is assuming that Kerry can develop a strong and firm plan about exactly what he is going to do as President, especially about the economy and the Iraq situation. Too many of us have been spoiled by the Clinton administration, and American prosperity in general, and take for granted that all war and economic woes are evil and unnecessary. I do agree that George Bush has been a horrible president, but we should not automatically assume that he is the lowest we can get. Before we scramble to the “anybody but Bush” rally cry of immature radical-liberals, we should carefully examine who we’re replacing him with, and make sure that the replacement we choose will indeed serve the nation better. So who’s the better candidate to lead and make decisions for America for the next four years? Unfortunately, or perhaps not, we’re not eligible to vote, so that will be left for the “adults” to decide. But judging by our mini-Westmoor poll, it looks like the 14-18 year old, Westmoor demographic is solidly pro-Kerry, or anti-Bush. As for me, I’m pulling for a John Edwards stunner at the Democratic National Convention come June 29.