John Kerry will be the better choice Nov. 2 because he has the qualities that will make him a president worthy of respect, capable of cooperation, and able to advance an agenda that will serve a majority of Americans rather than a few. This country needs such a president. Some believe that in 2000, George Bush, despite losing the popular vote, was propelled into office thanks to voter disenfranchisement in Florida (a problem now looming on many states’ horizons) and a Supreme Court decision made along partisan lines. His administration was lackluster at best until the World Trade Center attack, when national and world opinion alike swung around dramatically in his favor. He enjoyed a high domestic approval rating and the good will of the world and was given a second chance.
Three years later, America is in a dramatically worse position than it was Sept. 10, 2001. The threat of terrorism loomed real in 2001, but Bush has parlayed fear into a kind of shadow-mandate, using it to advance an aggressive and expensive foreign policy agenda that has entangled the American military in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we have yet to accomplish our goal of capturing Osama bin Laden; in Iraq, we now find ourselves viewed as occupiers rather than liberators in a country we attacked for the wrong reasons. Bush did his utmost to convince Americans that Saddam Hussein possessed terrible weapons and was cozy with bin Laden, but we now know that neither allegation was true.
At home, Bush expended his new popularity in cowing Congress into supporting a radical agenda. He created a system of disproportionate taxation that transfers wealth out of the hands of working- and middle-class Americans and into the hands of the rich. He has politicized science by suppressing government reports on global warming and the effectiveness of contraception and safe sex. He has given us Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has run over Americans’ civil liberties like a steamroller. He has shrouded major decisions in secrecy and pursued vendettas against dissenters within his own party’s ranks. He has pursued a religious agenda in public policy, with an eye toward the eventual denial of abortion rights and the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
During the debates, Americans were able to see that John Kerry is a public servant with a long record of commitment and conviction. While he did change his mind about Iraq, he has never failed to provide reasons for why he changed his mind, and as he pointed out during the first debate, the flexibility to reason toward decisions based on new information is preferable to stubborn arrogance. He has presented his goals and ideas as being based on principles, and he does not select his principles in order to obtain partisan political advantage: “I don’t care whether an idea is a Republican idea or a Democrat idea. I just care whether it works for America.”
Kerry’s ideas are a welcome change from Bush’s with-us-or-against-us approach. His proposal to modify the tax cuts by reducing the cuts only for those making more than $200,000 a year is simply common sense in the light of a massive budget deficit.
Bush’s opposition to stem cell research and abortion stems from personal religious conviction rather than considerations of its merits. Kerry, a devout Catholic who says that abortion would not be right in his life, nevertheless favors stem cell research for the medical benefits it could provide and defends a woman’s right to choose.
Whereas Bush has alienated the U.S. from much of the world, Kerry would commit himself to ensuring the safety of American troops abroad and would be in a better position to seek out international help in the rebuilding of Afghanistan and Iraq. And Kerry recognizes that the threat of terrorism, while real, is not so large that we should fundamentally alter the character of our society in response to it by reducing protections of Americans’ civil rights and breeding a climate of suspicion and fear of minorities. George Bush now governs from a mandate of fear rather than widespread popularity. He has pursued policies that have promoted inequality and intolerance within our borders and isolation and hostility without. John Kerry can restore America to the prosperity and equality that we deserve, and the respect that we are owed by the world. The choice will be yours Nov. 2.
Rob Hunter ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and philosophy.
