[Mb-civic] Eisenhower's son: Why I will vote for John Kerry + "It Was a Rout " (the debate)

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Sandwhiched between the article by President Dwight D Eisenhower's son 
and the one by William Rivers Pitt declaring Bush the hands-down-loser is a 
link to Bush' hometown Crawford TX newspaper....which just endorsed 
Kerry....

Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER 
Guest Commentary
 

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of 
extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will 
determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed 
for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and 
foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this 
country great. 

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, 
unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as 
our parents did or as we “always have.” We remained loyal to party labels. 
We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when 
we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them. 

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically 
expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election 
of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq 
unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and 
barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the 
Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry. 

The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally 
unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with 
the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental 
obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s 
whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion. 

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect 
for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of 
nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from 
that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting 
a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically 
devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current 
Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris 
and arrogance. 

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled 
world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to 
free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the 
action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United 
States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed 
within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an 
entire nation. 

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual 
freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight 
terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 
1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we put 
any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both.” I 
would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today. 

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal 
responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the 
economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished 
that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain 
that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans 
disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means 
of keep the nation’s financial structure sound. 

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small 
business. Today’s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the 
loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the 
direction of a society of very rich and very poor. 

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he 
is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers 
associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote 
for him enthusiastically. 

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this 
country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans 
and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the 
label of the party of one’s parents or of our own ingrained habits. 

John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the 
White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower 
administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The 
White House Years,” his Presidential memoirs. He served as American 
ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine 
books, largely on military subjects. 

--

George W. Bush's home town Crawford Texas
newspaper, Lone Star Iconoclast, who endorsed Bush in 2000, is endorsing
Kerry in 2004.  Detailed reasons.

  http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm

----

    It Was a Rout 
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective 

    Friday 01 October 2004 

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"
- Howard Cosell

    There was a President on that stage in Florida on Thursday night, and his name 
was not George. 

    This was supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths of Bush and his 
administration. Foreign policy in general and the protection of the United States from 
terrorism in particular, according to all the polls and every talking head within 
earshot, are the areas where George supposedly commands the high ground. That 
illusion came crashing down on the stage in Coral Gables. 

 
    How else can one describe the demeanor and behavior of Bush, as seen by 
40,000,000 television viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners? Shrill. 
Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. 
Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush lost his temper, and 
spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for all the world as though he were 
sucking on a particularly bitter lemon. 

    This is what happens when you surround yourself with yes-men. John Kerry put 
the bricks to Bush and the last four years of his administration clearly, concisely, 
eloquently and with devastating effect. Bush reacted like a man who has never, ever 
had anyone tell him anything other than "Good job, sir." 

    That is what happens when you have to defend your record as President, 
something that no one in the media or elsewhere had managed to force Bush to do in 
the last 1,000 days. In the October 2000 debate, Bush managed to hold his own 
simply by making promises and telegraphing an aw-shucks charm. On Thursday 
night, Bush faced a reckoning at the hands of a man who cut his teeth prosecuting 
and imprisoning mob bosses. 

    This was not a Bush meltdown. It was an exposure. George W. Bush was required 
to speak for 90 minutes without having the questions beforehand, facing an opponent 
far less pliable than the national press corps. The man he has always been, stripped 
of the hero-worship veneer, was there for all to see. 

    Don't take my word for it, though. 

    "They need to make Americans forget what happened tonight," said 
ultraconservative Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, speaking on what he believed the 
Bush campaign needed to do post-debate. Right out of the gate, Scarborough and the 
other talking heads gave the debate to Kerry, hands down, turn out the lights when 
you leave. "I think John Kerry," said Scarborough a bit later, "looked more 
Presidential." 

    A post-debate caller to C-SPAN announced herself as one who had voted for and 
supported Bush, and then described the Democratic candidate as "President Kerry." 
Freudian slip? We report, you decide. 

    At FreeRepublic.com, the bastion of far-right cheerleading, the faithful were 
fashioning nooses. "It's really painful listening to Bush," said one Godebert. "Kerry 
has had him on the defensive from the beginning. Kerry sounds confident while Bush 
has a pleading defensive tone. Not good so far." 

    "Kerry looked much more experienced," said one whadizit. "He appeared to be 
relaxed and in control. W looked weary and worn and sounded weary and worn." 

    "Unfortunately," saith The Sons of Liberty, "Kerry looked more prepared. He 
seemed to have more facts, however questionable, at his command and he delivered 
his message succinctly. Even when confronted on his flip-flops, he had plausible 
explanations. On the other hand, The President seemed to lose his train of thought at 
times. He continued to repeat the same things, and he looked tired and a little 
haggard. He needs to do much better next time." 

    The comments went on and drearily on in this vein, in conversation thread after 
conversation thread, until a forum participant named areafiftyone threw the 
distraught legions a lifeline: "I had that feeling that Kerry had the questions 
beforehand. He seemed to have his answers right on target. Bush seemed like he was 
surprised by the questions. I wish they could investigate to see if the DNC got a hold 
of the questions beforehand." 

    Yeah, that's it. Never mind that one participant had total command of the facts, an 
understanding of the foreign policy realm, a firm grasp on the situations in Iraq, 
North Korea and Afghanistan, while the other participant seemed shocked that faded 
platitudes and repeated campaign slogans weren't getting the job done. The 
shattering, humiliating, obvious defeat handed to George W. Bush before a massive 
television audience must have come because moderator Jim Lehrer somehow 
conspired with debate host Fox News to telegraph the questions to Kerry beforehand. 

    Or something. 

    The two most embarrassing moments for Bush, culled from a symphony of 
embarrassing moments, came while discussing the situation in Iraq. After many 
minutes of being pummeled about the head and shoulders with the realities of the 
mess he had created, Bush lost his temper for the ninth or tenth time and insisted, 
"We're going to win this war in Iraq!" Yet it was many months and many dead 
American soldiers ago, on May 1st 2003 in fact, that Bush stood below a banner 
reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and proclaimed, "Major combat operations in 
Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have 
prevailed." 
 
    Hm. 

    The second embarrassing moment came after Bush repeated his mantra about 
"staying the course" until the paint started to peel off the podium he was slouching 
over. We have to be resolute, we have to stay the course, we cannot send mixed 
messages to our troops and the world...and yet after an hour of bombardment from 
Kerry, Bush finally said, "Well, I think -- listen, I fully agree that one should shift 
tactics, and we will, in Iraq." 

    So, OK, let me get this straight: We have to stay the course and not send mixed 
messages, and you've been blowing voluminous amounts of sunshine up the 
collective American backside for weeks about how boffo the Iraq situation is, but 
after an hour of taking rhetorical body blows from your opponent, you suddenly 
claim we are going to change tactics? It seemed for all the world that John Kerry, his 
opponent, convinced Bush that things in Iraq are as bad as people have been saying 
for weeks and months now. 

    The most amusing aspect of the whole debate came several hours before it began, 
when ABCNews.com posted an Associated Press article discussing the debate in the 
past tense. "After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads," wrote 
AP, apparently putting the Way-Back Machine they've been building to use, 
"President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other 
directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-
stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath." 

    "The 90-minute encounter," continued AP reporter Nostradamus from his post 
somewhere in the space-time continuum, "was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing 
slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the 
election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a 
credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone 
to changing his positions." 

    The bloggers got hold of this masterpiece of gun-jumping by about 4:00pm EST, 
and ABC scrubbed the page. As for the 'flip-flopper' tag, you can put that particular 
Bush campaign talking point to bed. If this had been a boxing match, it would have 
been stopped. If Bush shows up for the next two debates, I will be, frankly, amazed. 
Watch for his campaign to reach for the chicken switch before the weekend is out, 
claiming perfidy on the part of the networks or some other sad folderol. 

    No amount of spin will be able to undo the reality of what took place in Florida on 
Thursday night. What happened on that stage was an absolute, immutable truth. Bush 
looked bad. Worse, he looked uninformed, overmatched and angry. Worst of all, he's 
going to have to go through it two more times. 

    If he shows up. 

   -------

© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org


 


-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, option D 
(up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options (option A - 
1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - up to 3x/day) 
please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you this email and you 
want to be on our list, send an email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which 
option you'd like.



Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20041001/4b09bea0/attachment.htm