Friday, August 05, 2005

Bush v. Kerry (again)

The Carpetbagger Report revisits the 2004 election. Yes, if only we could do it all over again. Would Bush still win? Who cares, you say? Well, compare Candidate Bush and President Bush. Are they really the same person? Kerry wasn't a great candidate, to be sure, but haven't Bush's ineptitude, overreach, and just plain bad policies (and offensive nominations) thus far in his second term prove Kerry right? Don't they make Kerry seem like a much more appealing candidate?

(I wonder what some of my conservative friends think of this...)

posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at 1:28 AM

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1 Comments:

  • I have wondered this any number of times, as I'm sure many have. In the end it seems to me the election was a year or so too soon. While I think, oddly enough, that Kerry is the wild card in such speculation (is Kerry a man America would ever elect - given a less than stellar personality, whether or not you agree with his positions, IMHO) it still seems the voting public just wasn't ready as a whole to abandon a "wartime president," despite his obvious problems even then.

    I have argued on other blogs that the U.S. public will stand behind a president, good or bad, if it feels threatened from without, in spite of that president's poor performance. It's just human tendency it seems to me. I think that is best reflected in Bush's poll numbers, which were plummeting in 2001 until Sept. 11 (though they were still far higher than today, the trend was obvious even then.) The Cheney/Rove/neocon cabal have played on that tendency with great effect. Even so, the "wartime president" barely squeaked by with a win.

    Patience does have it's limits - in spite of hiding the coffins of the dead, the message is sinking in -- what the hell did Iraq have to do with Osama? Why have so many of our "best and brightest" sacrificed there lives in the wrong war? Were those coffins the result of the real and necessary war on the terrorists of Sept. 11, Americans would remain solidly behind Bush, the Army and Marines would have no trouble meeting recruiting goals, and America would still be united, with the rest of the civilized world at our shoulder, as it was on Sept. 12, 2001.

    Americans are realizing that the truth is the terrorist found us in Iraq, not the other way around.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:51 PM  

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