America Split Down the Middle
Posted by Stuart at 10:08 AM on October 29, 2004The American Presidential election is upon us. Who will win? I have no idea, but I do think it's a bit of a shame that public opinion is divided down the middle, creating two Americas. You would think that we would be able to agree a little more.
In any case, in a few days we will know the outcome of the election. I don't talk much about politics on this site, but I just have to say that my vote is for Kerry for sure. He's not the most exciting guy, but to me, the person who is the President is only part of the picture. The people who the President surrounds himself with are also very important. And frankly, I despise most of Bush's advisors (Rumsfield, Ashcroft, Cheney, etc). Colin Powell and Condolleza Rice are the only ones I had respect for, but it seems to me that those two were shouted down by three mentioned above and now really have no say in what happens. Their credibility was damaged by having to go along with the Bush line.
Also, I think that Kerry is very a very intelligent man. (The same can be said for Gore, and the fact that he is a detail-oriented intellectual probably cost him the election.) I think that Kerry is a consolidator, not a divider. Being outside of the US I can see that most people in the world think that the US government has made a lot of mistakes over the last four years. When we went to Iraq and "took care of business" all by ourselves it gave us a very bad name. We still haven't been able to clean up the mess we made -- both on the ground in Iraq and in our relationships with other countries. I think that the world is getting smaller and smaller every day, and therefore cooperation is much more important than the US going on the offensive all the time, all alone.
Having written this now, I read back over it and can see that I am certainly no great political pundit. I'm just a regular guy who happens to be living overseas and who thinks it's time for a change in my home country.
