What Does it All Mean?

Alright.  It’s time for my mandatory Election 2004 entry.

First, I should note with chagrin that I voted for Dubya in 2000, because I found Gore repugnant and couldn’t bring myself to vote for him.  His pandering to the religious community, slumming for votes just didn’t do it for me.  I assumed that Bush, though I believed him to be less intelligent than Gore, would be able to find able people around him to help him run the country.  I also believed that Gore had used all his political capital in Washington during his years in Congress and his 8 as VP, and that Bush would bring fresh views to Washington. 

The people Bush chose to surround himself with after the Supreme Court decision giving him the election, though he failed to capture the popular vote, make my skin crawl, quite frankly.  The nightmare dream team of Wolfowicz, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc, is quite possibly the most frightening collection of corrupt individuals I’ve ever heard of in office.  Even Nixon’s crew of scary folks doesn’t stand up, in my mind, to this collection of folks.  To say I was disappointed with his selections is an understatement.  Bush has proven to be more resourceful and quick on his feet than I anticipated, but I think I pretty much got what I was expecting in that realm. 

After the 2000 election, the Democrats screamed bloody murder that the election had been stolen from them, blah, blah, blah, blah.  They regailed all of us with tales of tampered votes, suspect voter turnout, etc, etc, etc.  At any rate, with the election appeals process exhausted, Bush was declared the winner, Gore ungracefully left the public sphere, and Bush set to attempting to govern.  He managed to do alright for himself, in my humble opinion, with the notable exception of the Iraq war, which I adamantly opposed.  I find no reason to believe that Al Qaeda had any operatives in Iraq at the time of the war, and the other reasons suggested by Bush were in my opinion insufficient at the time of the invasion. I would have liked to have seen a bit more earnest attempts to build an international coalition.  With that single exception (which I agree with on principle, but not intent–Saddam Hussein was a murderous despot who needed to go, and the world was too gentle and afraid to go and get him), I have not had tremendous problems with Bush’s first four years.  I disagree that tax cuts are the correct solution to a rising deficit, but that’s really outside my sphere, and I figure with the cyclical nature of the economy, it will upturn when it will upturn, regardless of the president. (see Clinton, 1992, 1996, and Reagan, 1980, for more examples of this)

At any rate, with this coming election, the Democrats faced a significant challenge– finding a candidate who could unite the opposition to Bush on it’s many fronts without alienating itself to undecided voters who fell in my general category, “Not overly impressed with Bush, would be open to other alternatives.”  In the primaries, all the front runners in the different places, Clark, Dean and Kerry, all represented various radical positions I could not support, and I prayed the Democratic party would have the common sense to understand what was so clear to me– pick a centrist candidate, campaign on the economy and the Iraq war, and win.  Apparently, the Democrats weren’t smart enough to do that.  They picked, by all accounts, the most liberal Democrat in the Senate, Kerry, to run against Bush.  At the moment it became clear that Kerry would become the Democratic candidate, I became distraught, as I had no candidate whom I could support.  From my personal experiences with Kerry at a distance in DC and from the posture he took in campaign, in regards to what of his voting record I knew, I realized I would never vote for him.

This did not immediately swing my vote to Bush, however.  I was unconvinced that he represented my beliefs in the pertinent issues, and I needed proofs.  So I watched the debates.  What became clear to me in them is that even with I disagreed with George W. Bush, which happens often, his position is not unclear.  It is resolute.  It is non-negotiable.  I waited for Kerry to say anything of substance that I could verify about his plans for the country outside of attacking Bush’s supposed incompetence.  And I waited.  And I waited.  In the end, I was forced to choose between Bush’s direct, clear, resolute, answers to the questions, or Kerry’s wavering, nonsensical, flower-laced tirades.  Not much of a choice, in my opinion.

In the closing weeks of the election, I was reminded that Kerry’s plan about the war on terror was directly in distinction to his entire voting record in the Senate (that is, when he chose to show up for the votes at all).  He voted several times to cut funding to intelligence, for example, after the first bombing of the WTC.  Not exactly a dazzling endorsement when it comes to his opinion of national security. 

I also was pointed to several reports on the nature of the lack of international support in Iraq.  I’m not big on conspiracies, but when their seems to be money changing hands in the international sphere, it’s wise to watch where it is coming from, and where it is going.  France, Germany and Russia all participated in the UN “Oil for Food” program in Iraq, whereby Iraq was allowed to sell it’s oil on the world market for money, presumably to buy food for it’s citizens.  When the US invaded Iraq, they found money stashed in the walls of several of the highly placed Iraqi officials homes from that same program.  In addition, there were paper records that traced some of that money to Chirac, Putin and Schroeder, the leaders of the three countries that so decried the American invasion and now so desperately want to play a part in the reconstruction of Iraq.  In other words, France, Germany and Russia got both cheap oil and graft from the Iraqis, in order to secure the world’s noninterference in Saddam Hussein’s schemes.  In that light, the many UN warnings on Iraqi violations makes more sense.  I’m not sure I trust these reports entirely, but if Bush does, it does explain a certain amount about the events in the UN before the war, and certainly the UN and European positions on the war since Saddam was ousted.

Now, about the WMD.  We know that Saddam had them, in the most profound ways possible.  The reason we know?  Because we sold them the technology.  We have the sales receipts. Before 1992, the two largest biochemical and nuclear technology sellers to Iraq were?  You guessed it, the United States and the UK.  We sold them over 90% of the WMD technology.  We know they had it as late as 1999, just from mass media reports, not even counting extant US and international intelligence on the issue.  In other words, they had it.  My question is not whether or not they had it and how that effects the war, but rather, where that stuff has gone.  You don’t just dump pounds of biological agents in the desert when you’re done with them, unless you want a major event on your hands.  Who has

this material now?  If that doesn’t keep you up at night, it should–we’re in a lot of trouble if some sort of freelance terrorist organization has come up with the materials in lieu of our finding it.  Again, in this case, I don’t want international cooperation.  I want the materials found, and I want them found NOW.  I don’t care who we have to invade, I don’t care where we have to go to get it.  The biological agents in question must be found TODAY.  If you’re looking for scary fictional reads on the subject, check out The Cobra Event or The Hot Zone by Robert Preston, and you’ll quickly understand my stand on the issue.  What these agents are capable of is mindblowing.

Again, I say to you, I do not want Kerry, Mr. Internationally-friendly-and-prudent-solution himself, behind the controls of that search.  I want them found today, not in 20 years after 5 major attacks while we sit on our thumbs waiting for the international community to agree with us on how important this is.

That not withstanding, I might even have been able to vote for Kerry (shudder) if he had campaigned on the issues, instead of being the Anti-Bush.  Run because you’re the best man for the job, not because you’re better than who we have now.  It’s hardly an impressive distinction, and if you fail to prove you are in fact better for the job, as Kerry and his campaign most certainly did, at least with the 51% or so that voted for Bush–you’re not only out of political capital, but you become a whipping boy for the entire party’s ills, as Kerry now most certainly will.  Run because you believe you’re going to be a better president, not because you’re better than who’s there now.  That might sound ideological and  flowery, but I don’t think that changes the truth of the statement.  The fact of the matter is, people want to feel like they’re voting for the right person when they go to the polls, not just someone who is better than the other guy.  I think Kerry’s campaign strategists should be taken out behind the Senate office buildings and gutshot for that idea.  They overestimated how much the country disapproved of Bush, flat out.

And that’s not all.  They underestimated the silent majority in America, those who are quietly repulsed by liberal social programs and declining societal values and morality.  When the campaigns got dirty, as these certainly did, it came down to values on issues, and Kerry’s “I will do whatever is trendy this week” turned off that section of the voters, who in turn showed up at the polls for the first time in 20 years, for some of them.  The conservative part of America woke up and discovered it was strong.  The decay of morality in this country will only go so far before and the liberal programs which facilitate it will be denounced by the silent majority.  Watch this next four years carefully.  You may well find that the tone in the country changes, with the fraction between the average citizens, who find themselves generally opposed to social and moral change responding with anger to the radical changes purported by the Democrats and the ACLU.  As evidence, I suggest to you the 13 states in this election year that voted to make marriage exclusively a heterosexual endeavor.  Even supposedly democratic states saw the measures to carefully define marriage pass by surprising margins.  Our moral sense is apparently not yet obliterated.  I’m not coming out for or against the legalization of union between homosexuals, I’m only pointing at the numbers here.  (For the record, I believe marriage needs to be carefully defined both in the clerical sphere and the legal/public one.  If the public decides that the legal definition is the same as the clerical one in a democratic way, I think that must be honored, regardless of my agreement with it.  I don’t think the two need be the same, but if the majority of people suggests they should be the same (which by the way is not the same thing as the church imposing this on society), then I will support that decision.)  Kerry horribly misjudged the average American and what he/she stands for.  Plain and simple.  And for that miscalculation, he has lost the election, and any chance the Democrats had at making a change.

Another indicator is the Republicans gaining seats in both the Senate and the House. If you don’t think that is effected by the Presidential campaign, you’re flat wrong.  In this election that 51% took to the polls and voted the President’s coattails, something that would have been unthinkable 4 years ago.  I don’t know how Bush did it, but somehow he managed to gain support across the country in the midst of one of the most trying, divisive times in our entire history.  I’m not sure it wasn’t the Kerry campaign doing it for him, as I’ve noted, but it’s an impressive achievement, no less. 

And now we look towards 2008.  Early predictions?  Democrats run either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton (who else could they run at this point?  Clark? Gore? Kerry again? Dean?) and the Republicans find themselves someone who distances them from Bush and his 8 years, as a means of countering the swing back.  Early possibilities?  John McCain, or perhaps someone with appeal outside the political sphere, like Steve Largent, who has been a  representative from the middle part of the country and has notoriety from his outstanding football career.  Just some thoughts.  The next four years should be interesting.