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Editorial
The Nashville Scene
Kerry for President
These are complicated times. Oil prices skyrocket. A health care system wobbles. A complex system of education standards goes underfunded. The rising population bulge?"The Boomers"?places the future of Social Security in doubt. Medicare faces financial crisis. Drugs sell for pennies on the dollar in Canada, yet our citizens can't buy them there because our pharmaceutical companies have a hold on Congress. Our national debt mushrooms. The environment withers, we withdraw from international efforts to clean up the air, and rules to increase timber cutting and road construction on federal lands propagate. The richest 1 percent of Americans get big tax cuts. Poverty spreads.
A half a world away, we fight a war against a collection of seething nomads, well-armed tribes, religious sects and villages not far removed from the Stone Age. After racing into the conflict on false pretenses, without the support of other nations, and with no idea what we'd do if we won, we become engaged in a great mess. Nobody?and we mean NOBODY?offers a solution to stop the war other than to increase the troop levels and escalate the conflict. To "win the peace," we will have to fight another war.
These are challenging problems. They're not for the so-so student in the class. They're not for a simpleton. They're not for George Bush.
As president, Bush hasn't robbed the till. He hasn't consciously lied. He hasn't been corrupt. What Bush has been, however, is dumb. George Bush has the intellectual curiosity of a sophomore frat boy at a state university. He wears the one-dimensional enthusiasm of a reformed alcoholic who saw the Lord and threw away the bottle. George Bush watches the world go by, and he plays it back in black and white. To him there's no such thing as gray.
There is no information supply chain reaching into this president's office. When information does reach him, the bandwidth that accepts it is tiny. George Bush does not enjoy the clash of ideas, much less ideas themselves. Around him is a tiny circle of politically minded, hawkish advisors. When he's not listening to them, he's listening to God. Down here at the Scene, we're all for prayer. But at the exclusion of empirical evidence, human counsel and good old truth telling, God's word can be a dangerous thing.
George Bush's judgment is so tragically simple as to make us fearful for this nation. When an enemy in Afghanistan attacked us, he instead attacked Iraq. When the economy tanked, he gave money to the rich. And when he wasn't doing any of the above, he was putting on his cowboy hat, swaggering across America and projecting the image of America as Badass.
George Bush ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism. But when the world got dicey and his tiny viewfinder of a mind couldn't handle reality, he morphed into a schoolyard bully. If anything makes this newspaper regret this man's presidency, it is that the strongest nation in the world doesn't need to be a bully. Bullies are bullies because they're insecure and weak and dumb. This nation is none of the above. George Bush is all of above.
And so we endorse John Kerry. We do so without shouting his name from the mountaintops. But we do so knowing that he has a fully formed brain, that he fought honorably for this country and that he would work to regain the respect of nations around the world. We have no confidence he would figure out Iraq. We have no idea how anyone figures that out.
On the domestic front, we feel that John Kerry would respect ordinary working Americans, that he would work to reform entitlement programs for the sick and elderly, and that he would be more involved at an intellectual level with the policy discussions in which every president should be immersed. We also have more confidence in Democrats to get the debt under control. Republicans have totally lost their grip on proper fiscal stewardship.
Over time, John Kerry has grown on us. To a Southerner, his pedantic delivery and royal elocution can be a bit much, but in the debates we've slowly come around. We are confident John Kerry will at least engage with the complexity in today's world. It's not just that Bush won't do that. It's that he can't.
The Nashville Scene
Kerry for President
These are complicated times. Oil prices skyrocket. A health care system wobbles. A complex system of education standards goes underfunded. The rising population bulge?"The Boomers"?places the future of Social Security in doubt. Medicare faces financial crisis. Drugs sell for pennies on the dollar in Canada, yet our citizens can't buy them there because our pharmaceutical companies have a hold on Congress. Our national debt mushrooms. The environment withers, we withdraw from international efforts to clean up the air, and rules to increase timber cutting and road construction on federal lands propagate. The richest 1 percent of Americans get big tax cuts. Poverty spreads.
A half a world away, we fight a war against a collection of seething nomads, well-armed tribes, religious sects and villages not far removed from the Stone Age. After racing into the conflict on false pretenses, without the support of other nations, and with no idea what we'd do if we won, we become engaged in a great mess. Nobody?and we mean NOBODY?offers a solution to stop the war other than to increase the troop levels and escalate the conflict. To "win the peace," we will have to fight another war.
These are challenging problems. They're not for the so-so student in the class. They're not for a simpleton. They're not for George Bush.
As president, Bush hasn't robbed the till. He hasn't consciously lied. He hasn't been corrupt. What Bush has been, however, is dumb. George Bush has the intellectual curiosity of a sophomore frat boy at a state university. He wears the one-dimensional enthusiasm of a reformed alcoholic who saw the Lord and threw away the bottle. George Bush watches the world go by, and he plays it back in black and white. To him there's no such thing as gray.
There is no information supply chain reaching into this president's office. When information does reach him, the bandwidth that accepts it is tiny. George Bush does not enjoy the clash of ideas, much less ideas themselves. Around him is a tiny circle of politically minded, hawkish advisors. When he's not listening to them, he's listening to God. Down here at the Scene, we're all for prayer. But at the exclusion of empirical evidence, human counsel and good old truth telling, God's word can be a dangerous thing.
George Bush's judgment is so tragically simple as to make us fearful for this nation. When an enemy in Afghanistan attacked us, he instead attacked Iraq. When the economy tanked, he gave money to the rich. And when he wasn't doing any of the above, he was putting on his cowboy hat, swaggering across America and projecting the image of America as Badass.
George Bush ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism. But when the world got dicey and his tiny viewfinder of a mind couldn't handle reality, he morphed into a schoolyard bully. If anything makes this newspaper regret this man's presidency, it is that the strongest nation in the world doesn't need to be a bully. Bullies are bullies because they're insecure and weak and dumb. This nation is none of the above. George Bush is all of above.
And so we endorse John Kerry. We do so without shouting his name from the mountaintops. But we do so knowing that he has a fully formed brain, that he fought honorably for this country and that he would work to regain the respect of nations around the world. We have no confidence he would figure out Iraq. We have no idea how anyone figures that out.
On the domestic front, we feel that John Kerry would respect ordinary working Americans, that he would work to reform entitlement programs for the sick and elderly, and that he would be more involved at an intellectual level with the policy discussions in which every president should be immersed. We also have more confidence in Democrats to get the debt under control. Republicans have totally lost their grip on proper fiscal stewardship.
Over time, John Kerry has grown on us. To a Southerner, his pedantic delivery and royal elocution can be a bit much, but in the debates we've slowly come around. We are confident John Kerry will at least engage with the complexity in today's world. It's not just that Bush won't do that. It's that he can't.