23 August 2004 Blog Home : August 2004 : Permalink
Donald Sensing asks if a Kerry supporter can come up with a positive case for Kerry. Daniel Dresner has a post that says that Bush and Kerry are equally bad WRT the deficit and budgeting.
The problem, experts say, is that neither candidate truly has a plan to rein in America's burgeoning budget deficit which currently sits at more than $400 billion. Both campaigns offer budget plans that hide costs or assume savings that are unlikely to occur, while adding more than $1 trillion of new spending. And while each candidate promises to cut the deficit in half over the next four years, the issue ranks low on their priority list....
The campaigns on the other hand seem to be focussing their energies elsewhere
Arguing about Vietnam is mostly stupid. As far as I can see Kerry's service in Vietnam was adequate, but he gamed the system as much as he could to make himself look better than he actually was. Big Deal. Bush gamed the system to get to fly cool jets. Likewise Big Deal. Both were better than (say) Bill Clinton who gamed the system to dodge any service what so ever and worse than (say) McCain. The only bit of relevant info I can see about Vietnam is that we learn that Kerry seems to be good at exaggerating his war record, but he is neither the first nor the last politician to do that.
Arguing about Iraq is potentially more sensible. Except that Kerry seems to promise different things each time he talks and Bush just talks about staying the course. At various points Bush has ellucidated a strategy for democratizing the Middle East which is excellent and better than Kerry who doesn't seem to have any strategy at all. But Bush's tactics have been just as inconsistent so its pretty much of a wash there too.
Neither candidate can boast about his record. Bush was an adequate governor but so far as I can see nothing special and during his term as president the economy has just about recovered from the party of the Clinton years and subsequent hangover. I don't think Bush caused the downturn and don't think he did much to stimulate recovery. Kerry has been an adequate senator and definitely nothing special.
For someone who believes in less government, as I do, neither man appeals.
The only difference as far as I can see is that Kerry wants stability to be a goal whereas Bush thinks that the global situation needs change. I agree with Bush in his diagnosis. I disagree with some of his prescription. I do think that a lot of despotic regimes will prefer Kerry because they think they can get away with more from Kerry. That is something that I do not wish to encourage and therefore I am for Bush. But we're talking about supporting the lesser of two evils here not being wildly in favour of one or the other.
Update: the Instapundit talks about a promising parallel universe and lots of people seem to like it