"Anybody But Bush"
What a load of crap.
When I first heard of the Anybody But Bush bumper sticker, I smiled and thought it was pretty sharp as far as political commentary on a bumper sticker goes. But even at that time, I personally wasn't willing to adopt such a philosophy. Yeah, Bush is bad and needs to go, but let's not get carried away with it. Decisions made in the heat of passion can come back to bite us and basing our votes on a such a premise is highly dangerous and counterproductive at best.
President Bush is bad, yes, but he isn't a dictator. He has Congressional support, but he didn't always have it. And even in spite of that, opposition leaders could still have voiced said opposition even in the face of defeat. Instead we had a bunch of spineless chumps lacking in any sort of coherent believe system or ideological integrity at all. There were some, of course, like Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean.
But what about everyone else? And yes, I mean *everyone* else. President Bush got his blank check to go to war from a Senate that was not dominated by Republicans at the time. John Kerry, Vietnam vet and anti-war activist, Democratic presidential candidate currently campaigning on a platform against the war, voted for it!! Hilary Clinton, NY Senator who's name is bandied about as the potential first female president of the U.S. gave a doublethink speech right before she voted in support of the war where she essentially said "war is bad, we shouldn't go to war, it isn't the right thing to do, so I will vote for it." Whisky, Tango, Foxtrot!!!!
And then the democratic electorate failed us. Howard Dean was a man of principle and passion. He had his faults, as does every candidate and every platform. But voters got cold feet in the primaries and bought into the mass media sound bytes about some amorphous notion of "electability", whatever the hell that is. No one really knows, other than Howard Dean was judged not to have it and John Kerry had more of it than anyone else.
So in the end we rejected a man of ideological integrity and a consistent message that was highly popular and instead chose a man who was a supporter of Bush, who enabled the current President to operate unimpeded and recklessly. John Kerry is part of the problem we are enduring right now and I fail to see how he can thus be part of the solution. The only thing he has going for him is that he isn't George W. Bush.
So here we see what is wrong with Anybody But Bush thinking. We were so focused on the anti-Bush part that we really did base our entire selection criteria solely on the "electability" of the contender. If Mr. Ed the horse had enough charisma and a PR department that effectively convinced us of his electability, I'm sure we'd have voted for him too.
But what do we end up getting? All we get is exactly what we were looking for, anybody but Bush. Pay no mind to the quality of that anybody or the history of that anybody as being part of the problem that Bush represents.
I want to be able to vote for a candidate to replace President Bush, I really really do. Bush is a horrible man for the job and he is causing great damage to the world and civilization and my country. But I cannot vote for Anybody But Bush, I just can't. I need to vote for someone that is actually going to do something to make things better. John Kerry is nothing but a stopgap and is really part of the problem. It's too bad that we weren't able to produce a real alternative to Bush, someone Better Than Bush, rather than just Anyone But Bush.
Your comments are always welcome
Posted by Nutrimentia at July 10, 2004 12:41 AM | TrackBack