A Proven Failure Or Take a Gamble?

At this time of year my father always said, “ In most elections, but especially presidential elections, you have to choose the lesser of two evils.” I didn’t accept his premise when I first started to vote, but as I aged his words rang more and more true. This presidential election is kind of a capstone to my father’s thesis. Our choice today is between someone who has failed as president and an opportunist who may get us back to a more rational, more centrist form of government.

In my view Mr. Bush has failed in at least three primary areas, all of which are interrelated: combating terrorism, international relations and the economy. True, the initiation of the current wave of global terrorism cannot be laid at his door. But, his war on Iraq has certainly been a primary recruiting mechanism for the terrorists of the world; they could not have asked for a better motivator to staff their cause. On September 12, 2001, virtually every nation on earth extended their sympathy for our loss; most joined us in attempting to combat terrorism. In two-and-a-half years, the Bush administration dissipated just about all of that goodwill, so that we have only England by our side in what may be the major battleground of the twenty-first century. Partly because of his war the deficit has reached new heights. If other nations stop buying our bonds, we’d be out of business. There has been only one other president whose administration saw more unemployed workers than this administration; that president was Herbert Hoover, who was overwhelmed by the Great Depression.

And, I don’t have to stop my list of his failures here. There’s the rape of the environment, the merging of church and state, the Medicare fiasco, the unwillingness to fund No Child Left Behind… It goes on and on.

Yes, Kerry is an opportunist. He has not been a leading senator. He has failed to articulate a program that the average Joe can understand. But, compared to the unbelievably bad record of the Bush administration, Kerry is a small beacon of hope. He can’t be worse than Mr. Bush. We’re down close to as far as we can go. We need hope if we are to get out of the slough of despond.