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I cannot really find
the words to express my disappointment in the political system I saw in
the campaign for the President of the United States. This state of disgust
is not confined to me, but I am also seeing it in other people who have
had enough of the slash and burn politics with candidates telling the
public anything to get a vote.
I begin this article by saying that I am a
Democrat who identified with the values of the Democrat party as I learned
them from President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy drew me into the
Democrat party when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you,
but ask what you can do for your country.”
Those were powerful words from a president
who seemed to be telling the people to take responsibility for their own
lives and to not rely on the government for solving our problems or
providing our needs. President Kennedy’s words also seemed to be
encouraging hard working people to consider entering some form of public
service to operate the government with efficiency.
President Kennedy went on to challenge the American people to send
a man to the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the decade.
This was an incredible example of setting national goals and motivating a
team of talented people to achieve that goal in a way that will make the
United States the envy of the world. We achieved that mission about five
months before the deadline when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and
then returned safely to earth. We have not since seen such good examples
of leadership from the office of the President of the United States.
Although the people voted for Kennedy as president, we ended up
with Vice-President Lyndon Johnson as the President of the United States
following the Kennedy assignation. President Johnson was a Democrat who
brought us “The Great Society.” The Great Society was a vision to bring
prosperity to everyone in the United States and it included legislation to
provide financial aid to poverty-stricken people throughout the country.
Statistically, it was a success. The number of people who were in the
poverty class were reduced, smog control devices were added to vehicles to
reduce pollution, laws were enacted to reduce other forms of pollution,
systems were put into place to provide opportunities for minority people,
and programs were put into place to improve our educational system.
I believe that many of the concepts of The Great Society were
valid, but most of them were simply the beginning of a series of steps
toward socialism. The welfare system was an example of a program that
redistributed the wealth from those who had worked hard for their money to
be given to those who did little. As a young man growing up in the
sixties, I slowly began to realize that the United States of America was
moving toward becoming a socialist society while the Soviet Union was
moving toward capitalism.
While being registered as a Democrat, I believe I have retained my
ideals while the Democrat Party has steadily and incrementally become the
party of socialism. I believe the most obvious example was the attempt by
the Clinton administration to bring us a socialized medical system.
I voted for President Bush in 2000, but was disappointed with what
appeared to be groupthink as he took us into the war in Iraq. Despite my
belief that we had moved to war without sufficient justification, I have
stood behind my president once the decision was made and the bombs began
to fall. I will not repeat the mistakes of my generation by being critical
of a war while our troops are fighting. This was done while we were in
Viet Nam and we need to not repeat those mistakes.
Because of my concern over the Bush administration’s justification
to engage in a war in Iraq, I had decided not to vote for President Bush
in 2004. That decision changed after watching the alternative to our
current president. I suspect that many conservative democrats were doing
as me.
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My decision not to vote for President Bush
was my reason for paying close attention to the Democratic National
Convention. I was pleased about many of the things I heard and was
especially pleased by the rhetoric about wanting to conduct a clean and
friendly campaign, but I was prepared to look for any inconsistencies
between the words and the actions. I had concerns that Senator Kerry was
focusing so much on his war record from the Viet Nam war, but that was his
right and it might differentiate himself from the President who served in
the Texas Air National Guard.
It was about a day after the Democratic National Convention that I
first saw the signals that the campaign was going to become ugly and
involve a lot of mudslinging. I don’t like the label of “flip flop” that
has been assigned to Senator Kerry’s changes of position, but it appeared
to me that these changes reflect a tendency to tell people whatever they
want to hear.
Senator Kerry’s changes in position quickly became a red flag for
many. As a business consultant I look for trends of consistency and look
for the logic in a person’s argument or presentation. I watched carefully
as the war of insults became more aggressive against the sitting
president.
I can remember when it was wrong for a candidate to make claims
like lying or incompetence about the conduct of a sitting president
without irrefutable evidence of the misconduct. It has always been
acceptable for a candidate to propose alternatives to the sitting
president’s methods, but Senator Kerry went way beyond stating an
alternative position. Senator Kerry has become very loose with his
accusations of misconduct, lying, and incompetence against President Bush.
Senator Kerry’s aggressive criticism of President Bush has caused
me to change my position regarding my vote in the election. Like many, I
would like to see an alternative to President Bush, but I believed that
Senator Kerry does not have the character to lead our nation. An analysis
of his programs and plans indicate he has dreams and not plans. His
promises to the voters will result in a large increase in taxes and a
giant step toward socialism. I believe he would return us to the concepts
of President Johnson’s Great Society, which we have spent many years
trying to correct.
For these reasons, I voted to reelect President Bush for President
of the United States. I watched the election results and was pleased to
see conservatism prevail.
Reflecting on the campaign, I have a
difficult time believing we still live in the United States of America.
The campaign seemed to have been filled with an excessive number of false
statements and dirty politics that I saw coming from the liberal side of
the race. Posters claiming that conservatives were attempting to deny the
minority vote were particularly disgusting, but the will of the people
prevailed and liberalism lost in the end. The Republican Party even picked
up some seats in the congress.
Why can’t we have more friendly and honest
elections in the future? Why can’t we have better debates with facts and
plans instead of criticism? Why can’t we do away with the 527 ads that
were used to simply smear the name of a candidate? Why can’t the news
media remain neutral in areas of politics? Why can’t the literature about
ballot measures reflect the true nature of the measure? Why can’t we
simply accept the outcome of an election and allow the winner to be the
winner?
I wanted to vote for change, but the John
Kerry I saw on the campaign trail failed to tell me anything about how he
planned to run the country after being elected. His campaign rhetoric
became overly predictable. Whenever something happened in the world that
could be spun as a mistake by President Bush, he would blame the president
and announce that he had a better way. That is not campaigning; its dirty
politics. Saying that you would have done better is not a plan. |
I watched the debates with interest and
saw a President who was attempting to communicate his position and
direction for the country. I also saw Senator Kerry saying nothing of
substance other than to use his predictable line that the President was
wrong and that he had a better way. Unfortunately, he never offered any
specificity with his little speeches. I saw a debate over the issues and
only heard Senator Kerry giving a series of short campaign speeches.
The use of 527 ads became a national disgrace throughout the
campaign. I felt most of them were simply expensive misstatements against
a sitting President of the United States. The vast majority of the ads
were based on little or no factual information and simply intended to
smear the President. The only 527 ads that seem to have any credibility
were those done by a group called the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth.
They seemed to be a group of Senator Kerry’s former colleagues who
conducted a personal campaign of truth to prevent the Senator from
becoming Commander in Chief of the armed forces.
Overall, President Bush won reelection despite the opposition
spending about a hundred million dollars on campaign ads to prevent his
reelection. He also survived a motion picture called Fahrenheit 911, by
Michael Moore, which contained a lot of factually questionable material.
Surveys showed that many young people obtained their voting information
about the candidates by watching this movie.
I watched as the news media showed a series of stories that
appeared to be slanted to cast the President in a negative light. The FOX
news channel presented a more favorable side of the news events. I had the
pleasure of seeing coverage on FOX and coverage of the same events on the
traditional network newscasts, and could hardly believe the difference in
the two stories. It seemed as if the network news agencies were looking
for any opportunity to provide news coverage that was critical of
President Bush while avoiding any stories critical of Senator Kerry. This
continued until Dan Rather appeared to have rushed to air a negative story
about the President that turned out to have been supported with falsified
documents. No news agency covered the story of Senator Kerry possibly
being discharged following a Navel Courts Martial.
Local ballot measures seem to be somewhat deceptive. Local Measures
U and V campaigns sent a lot of material promoting those measures as
providing city parks and downtown improvements. None of the literature I
saw told the real truth that both measures were being put to the people by
housing developers who were trying to get around previous legislation
passed by the voters to limit growth in the City of Tracy. This kind of
failure to fully disclose would not be permitted in the business
community. Political campaigns should not be allowed to deceive the public
into voting for the measure. They should tell the whole truth.
The active members of the Democrat Party seem to not recognize the
election victory by President Bush. They don’t seem to realize there is a
conservative movement in this country and that the Democrat Party has
moved too far toward Socialism. Although the majority of the people voted
for President Bush and his agenda, they seem to feel that the President
should set his agenda aside and adopt theirs. The people have spoken.
There was no widespread attempt to deny people the right to vote. The
President does not need to alter his agenda to that of the Democrats; the
Democrats need to move their agenda toward that of the Republican Party
and the legacy of President John F. Kennedy.
Let’s stand behind the president and our troops. Let the news media
know that you no longer wish to hear their slanted opinions of liberal
reporters and news directors who present the news in accordance with their
own political agendas. Let’s send a clear message to the political parties
that we do not wish to appear as a third world nation during our elections
and we want honesty in our campaigns. Write your senator and congressman
today to let them know how you feel.
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