The Chicago Tribune (owner of the LA Times) has endorsed President Bush for re-election. Their primary reason is national security in a post-9/11 world -- a world they feel that Kerry does not inhabit:
On the most crucial issue of our time, Kerry has serially dodged for political advantage. Through much of the 2004 election cycle, he used his status as a war hero as an excuse not to have a coherent position on America's national security. Even now, when Kerry grasps a microphone, it can be difficult to fathom who is speaking--the war hero, or the anti-war hero.And even on domestic policy -- an area where a major urban newspaper in a Democrat town would be expected to extol the Democrat's virtue -- the Tribune has little good to say about Kerry:
Kerry displays great faith in diplomacy as the way to solve virtually all problems. Diplomatic solutions should always be the goal. Yet that principle would be more compelling if the world had a better record of confronting true crises, whether proffered by the nuclear-crazed ayatollahs of Iran, the dark eccentrics of North Korea, the genocidal murderers of villagers in Sudan--or the Butcher of Baghdad.
In each of these cases, Bush has pursued multilateral strategies. In Iraq, when the UN refused to enforce its 17th stern resolution--the more we learn about the UN's corrupt Oil-for-Food program, the more it's clear the fix was in--Bush acted. He thus reminded many of the world's governments why they dislike conservative and stubborn U.S. presidents (see Reagan, Ronald)....
Kerry, though, has lost his way. The now-professed anti-war candidate says he still would vote to authorize the war he didn't vote to finance. He used the presidential debates to telegraph a policy of withdrawal. His Iraq plan essentially is Bush's plan. All of which perplexes many.
Worse, it plainly perplexes Kerry. ("I do believe Saddam Hussein was a threat," he said Oct. 8, adding that Bush was preoccupied with Iraq, "where there wasn't a threat.") What's not debatable is that Kerry did nothing to oppose White House policy on Iraq until he trailed the dovish Howard Dean in the race for his party's nomination. Also haunting Kerry: his Senate vote against the Persian Gulf war--driven by faith that, yes, more diplomacy could end Saddam Hussein's rape of Kuwait.
On domestic issues, the choice is also clear. In critical areas such as public education and health care, Bush's emphasis is on greater competition. His No Child Left Behind Act has flaws, but its requirements have created a new climate of expectation and accountability. On both of these important fronts, but especially with his expensive health-care plan, Kerry primarily sees a need to raise and spend more money....It is actually this last point that I find most compelling. Anyone who has ever worked in a policy setting (in business, government or a non-profit) knows that there are three types of people: the doers who lead; the whiners and critics who offer no solution themselves; and those that follow the first group to the annoyance of the second. Bush is clearly in the first camp, Kerry clearly in the second.
John Kerry has been a discerning critic of where Bush has erred. But Kerry's message--a more restrained assault on global threats, earnest comfort with the international community's noble inaction--suggests what many voters sense: After 20 years in the Senate, the moral certitude Kerry once displayed has evaporated. There is no landmark Kennedy-Kerry Education Act, no Kerry-Frist Health Bill. Today's Kerry is more about plans and process than solutions. He is better suited to analysis than to action. He has not delivered a compelling blueprint for change.
Dear Mr. Murphy,
I just discovered your blog. I'm a big fan, but I am mortfied with your politics. I am surprised you consider Kerry a "whiner." Did you watch the same debates as me? In all three, Kerry was even-toned and consistent in his demeanor. Bush, on the other hand, had a different personality and demeanor in each of three debates. His voice gave me a headache in the townhall debate. Additionally, Bush seems to me like more of flip flopper than Kerry. For example, he campaigned against nation building in 2000, then embraced it after 9/11. He also lies. Bush lied in the debates when he said most of his tax cuts went to the middle class.
The Bush White House openly disdains what it refers to as the "reality-based community" in favor of Bush's "intuitive" leadership style. How you can you support a candidate that rejects reality?
Matt Burr
Austin Texas
Forgive me while I continue my rant... not everything Bush does is perfect? Ahem.
Lets see where Bush's intuition has lead him. It lead him to believe in Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted felon on the lamb and, as it turns out, an Iranian intelligence asset. Chalabi and his son directly fed Bush bogus intelligence (bypassing CIA vetting)about Hussein's purported WMD... it was all a big swindle!
It lead him to believe in Richard Perle, a primary architect of the Iraq inveasion. I have seen Richard Perle and Juan Cole testify together before Richard Lugar's committee. Cole reads arabic and reads arabic newspapers everyday. He predicted the insurgency we now fight. Perle is such a lightweight, it is a joke.
Bush virtually admitted to an israeli newspaper that God told him to invade Iraq.
Bush suppressed and ignored prewar warnings about troop levels for reconstruction and warnings about the civil chaos that would follow the invasion. Great instincts. Not perfect? I would be happy with mere competence.
Bush disdains science. He hasn't made up his mind about evolution. On his recent interview, he and O'Reilly laughed about, to effect, how studying is for losers.
Whats with the obssession with action? Lemmings also are very active. I can appreciate your contempt for obstructionists, but wasn't it Bush who sued to obstruct the recount in Florida? Doesn't Bush obstruct the enforcement of environmental regulations? Isn't Bush just as obstructionist as any politican when it suits his agenda? If you're referring specifically to the war on terror, from where do you draw your confidence that Bush will wage the war effectively? If Iraq gives you confidence, can you please explain who the enemy is now? Its not Saddam. Its not al queda. Its not Bin Laden. Oh yeah, its the people we liberated. Sure, there are foreign influences at work in the insurgencey, but thay are mainly exploiting an opening we gave them, and they are also operating with native support...that should tell us something. We are now routinely bombing and strafing civilians. Its become a body count war. Thats gonna make us popular. Excellent plan. Good instincts. Way to to act. Get out the way, we're fighting, damn it.
Matt Burr