I challenged myself to write a letter about why I support Kerry.

[bigpathpaul]

Here it is:

The Case for John Kerry

September 21, 2004

Dear Fellow Americans:

This is perhaps a less enthusiastic endorsement than the Democrats might hope for. But it is a consciously sane choice. Amid the campaign machinations, desperation to do the manly thing and winless battles over each candidate’s military service something gets lost – the man.

Each party has its talking points, strategies, focus groups. All this is, unfortunately, modern politics. We need to get this two-year election campaign over with ASAP and move on to the real work.

I’m arguing that John Kerry is clearly the best man for the job. He’s an intellectual, and while that’s a foreign trait in the White House as of late, and a mixed blessing at times, its clearly superior to the alternative.

Kerry, when he’s not bogged down by arguments within his own party, is the more capable leader – realistic, but not without the idealism that has marked great statesmen of the past. Although Bush plays the “it’s not my fault” or “its all my doing” role depending on which is to his party’s advantage, he’s neither brilliant nor a simpleton, but somewhere closer to average.

Big negative for Bush is his danger to society. Not always because of his own poor judgment, but because he surrounds himself with bonehead Neanderthals who can’t let go of the fact that the cold war is over. In their desperate desire to replace it, they’ve sent more than 1,000 Americans to their deaths in an unexplained war that seems to have benefited Halliburton much more than anyone else in America.

And while it may be unfair to blame Bush entirely for the war, someone’s got to take responsibility for every bad choice he made in personnel: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft. You have to go out of your way to surround yourself with that many people who incompetent, dangerous or both. The blame for each of those bad choices rests clearly on the man in the oval office.

John Kerry is compassionate and credible, and, when he breaks out of the mind-set of what’s right for the campaign and does what he’s best at which is focusing what’s right for this country he’s miles ahead of Bush who seems clueless about what most Americans want and need.

George Bush has had four years to show this country what he’s capable of and come up with squat: A war that can’t be won, some failed, under-funded social programs and the largest deficit in history.

So I say: keep it simple – vote not only for John Kerry and John Edwards, but also lots of Congresional Democrats and move on from there. That’s how we move forward and reach sensible goals that benefit everyone.

Kerry is not the perfect man for the job, but he’s at 85%. Bush is somewhere in the 30th percentile. Once Kerry is in office, he’ll be able to undo some of the damage that Bush has done right away. The rest will be hard work, but not as hard as when Clinton was in office because we know a lot more now about how conservatives work to manipulate public debate and how the media plays along. None of that is Bush’s fault. He’s a product of it much more than a participant and maybe not smart enough to even understand how it all works.

So, it’s not a “wave-the-flag, sound-the-horns, drop-the balloons” endorsement of the Democrats, but it’s clearly a more sane choice than four more years of bad Republican choices.