From a recent President Bush speech:
"I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record," Mr. Bush said. "But the question is who's best to lead the country in the war on terror, who can handle the responsibilities of the commander in chief, who's got a clear vision of the risks that the country faces."
"I think we ought to be looking forward, not backward," he said.
First of all, he's absolutely right about everything. It's actually a really decent, sensible quote from someone not known for such things. But what will make Simpsons fans laugh is the last line, taken almost verbatim from the Simpsons when the two aliens run for President:
"My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball, but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom."
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
This is great
Posted by Bell Curve at 5:33 AM
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3 comments:
First, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Second, it would be a great quotation except that it doesn't say anything other than: "ignore my record, ignore his record, vote on your speculations about the future!"
Bush is scared witless that people might actually vote retrospectively. That is they will ask themselves the classic Reagan '84 question: "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" There is enormous evidence that that is how people vote. If it happens this year, Bush will lose.
Oh, and another thing: who would know better the risks our country faces than the man who put us at risk in the first place (by needlessly invading Iraq and proposing a massive decrease in our military presence on the increasingly dangerous Korean Peninsula).
Yeah, but both candidates seem to want to focus on something other than their record (unless you count Kerry's Vietnam service as his record). So this race really is about speculation on the future.
Of course all elections are really about the future. But since we can't predict the future and don't trust politicians to be honest about what they will do to us, for us or in our name in the future, we have to rely on their record.
This is a problem for both Bush and Kerry. For Bush it's a problem because most people feel worse off on a variety of dimensions than when Bush took office. For Kerry, it's a problem because Congress and especially the Senate is a place of compromise and negotiation. Representatives and Senators trade votes on each others' pet bills and submit amendments to bills that make the other guys make embarassing votes (like maneuvering Kerry into looking like he was voting against new body armor for the troops on what was really a tax and appropriations bill). If you stay in Congress long enough your voting record can be made to characterize you as anything from a committed conservative to a committed liberal to a feckless flip flopper.
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