I wonder what four more years of George W. Bush will bring, particularly to working class people, people like me. Because that’s what we’re likely to get. John Kerry spends entirely too much time defending himself against W’s accusations. He should have come out early against our invasion of Iraq – early and strong. He’s just too compromised now.
My otherwise intelligent Republican friends, meanwhile, are sending me idiotic anti-Kerry e-mails – one, full of photos of W. looking presidential against shots of Kerry looking silly or effete; another, full of “good news” from Iraq, where things are apparently going quite well.
What are otherwise intelligent Democrats doing right now?
© 2004, Paul Woodford. All rights reserved.
Dick Herman 10/11/04 7:58 PM
A very astute observer once called this “the silly season.” How true. Here’s the irony: politics by definition is partisan. But once elected, a president can only govern from near the center. That’s just the way the system works. Bill Clinton discovered that the hard way.
If Kerry is elected and does what he says he’ll do, he’ll out-Bush Bush in the Middle East. Domestically, he’ll have to find a way to work with Congress, again a-la Clinton.
I see a lot of e-mails from Iraq and it all depends on where they’re from. Let’s face it, we screwed up the pacification phase of the operation something fierce.
An interesting aside here. I seriously doubt that Americans would have tolerated what it takes to truly pacify a situation like the one that existed in Iraq. We’re talking martial law, shooting looters on sight, curfews, concentration camps, containment and then destroy (reference English experience in Malaysia in early 1960s).
That doesn’t make the problem intractable, just difficult as all hell. By the way, I’ve been doing a scattergram of the violence as best I can. Very interesting. It does lend itself to cluster analysis and I can see things starting to happen in Iraq. We could see a significant turn around in the next few months. On the other hand . . . .
It’s too bad that patience has never been our long suit.