Problem with Bush

Acceptance speech

The parts of the President's acceptance speech that NPR played this morning actually sounded pretty good. It will be interesting to see it there's any convention "bounce".

Part of me fears that if Mr. Bush IS elected, he'll have four years to pursue his (to my mind) short sighted, ideology driven agenda, to the vast profit of a few and the ruin of the country. He'll be free of any restraint since he can't be re elected.

In the back of my mind, however, I wonder if he won't ALSO be free of his "backers". He might even look maore carefully at his place in history.

We'll see.

 

It was a great speech, and I predict he will get a bounce--but bounces are usually temporary, and Kerry has two months to make up the difference, so the outcome is still very much up in the air.

If the George Bush who spoke last night were the same George Bush who has been in office over the past three and three quarter years, I would have felt much better about the prospects of a two-term Bush presidency (other than his comments about appointing "non-activist," e.g. conservative, judges and "protecting marriage" by not letting some people have it). It was a speech that reminded me of the better Reagan speeches in tone and some of the better Clinton speeches in content. Probably the best pure political speech I've ever seen Bush give.

But Kerry has taken on a daring strategy just now by buying up $50M in advertising in the 13 swing states over the next two months. Why is this a big deal? Two reasons: (1) By buying this much airtime so far in advance, Kerry is getting the advertising time at a heavy pre-fall discount and can guarantee that he'll have significantly more ad time than Bush will; (2) Bush will know exactly what Kerry's planning to do two months in advance and will attempt to compensate accordingly. Kerry's banking that the 13 swing states will remain swing states until November 2nd; if more than a few of them move to one column or the other, Kerry stands to waste a significant amount of money. If not, this stategy could very well win him the presidency and change the way candidates buy ads in the future. Hold on to your seats, folks; this is going to be an interesting election.


Cheers,

 

Re: Acceptance speech

You know Nosborne, an awful lot of the heat surrounding this election is about... fear. Fear about what Bush might do, and fear about what Kerry might do.

If Bush had turned out half as bad as I originally feared (I was a McCain supporter), the religious-right would have created their theocracy and American women would already be in their burqas.

But Bush actually has been much more socially moderate than I had originally thought. He occasionally uses religious-right rhetoric in speeches to his base, but he hasn't been in any huge rush to shove through any radical social-change agenda. He seems pretty satisfied with the way things are.

Well, Democrats need to realize that John Kerry creates the same kind of disquiet in the other side.

Despite his attempts to wrap himself in the flag of his Vietnam service, the guy is a former leading anti-war activist and a big-shot honcho of the early 70's "new left". Since then he has built up perhaps the most liberal voting record of any US Senator. (It's not a record that's particularly friendly to the military or to the intelligence agencies.)

So there are fears about Kerry that mirror those about Bush. Is Kerry an ideologue? If elected, would he set about enforcing a radical-left social-change agenda on the United States? Would everything be self-righteous political correctness and trendy race-class-gender theory?

Would we all have to learn... French?

I suspect that like George Bush, he might turn out to be a more moderate President than his militant base hopes. But the fear remains.

 

Billdayson:

You're damn right it's about fear. And I admit that actually LOOKING at the facts of, say, the Bush tax cuts and the results on the tax code itself, at least SOME of my fears are misplaced.

But, I can still HATE GWB if I want, can't I?

 

It is pretty pathetic when all the Republicans can come up with is a silver spoon warhawk and his draft dodging Veep and the Dems can only come up with no agenda Kerry and his lawyer running mate.

Can't we do better? Of course. Both are pretty poor excuses for such as high office.

My choice - either vote for a known failure or someone who might failure. GW had his 4 years to muck it up, time for him to walk in shame back to Texas.

 

Sincerely Believe!

SE9453,

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