I’m a life long Democrat. When Kerry was defeated, on some level, I was relieved.
Allow me to explain: Kerry would have inherited a huge mess in Iraq, the summer after his swearing in, he would have had to deal with Katrina. I think if Kerry had been elected, some Republicans would make the argument that everything was fine with FEMA until Kerry came to power and we were just about the wrap up Iraq. He would have been handed the keys to a kingdom that is in a state of collapse.
With the re-election of Bush and the Republican control of Congress the nation has a chance to see what two-terms of Bush means. There is no blaming Clinton, or a Democratic Congress, it’s all GOP all the time. I see it as tough love for our nation.
Any other Dems feel the same way, or have I just gone nutty out here in the desert?
Bush hasn’t gotten much done in his second term, but he did veto a stem research bill, put Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court, and his re-election allowed him the chance to keep repeating some of his errors for another four years. You know that saying about “it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness?” I think it would have been better to have someone try to fix Bush’s mistakes. The fact that he’ll be blamed for his own failures is satisfying, but it’s minor comfort and won’t help anybody dying in Iraq, for example.
You make an excellent point. Most of the folly created by the Bush administration was already underway w/ not much hope of an immediate reversal. It’s going to take a decade, or more, for the U.S. recover, politically, from the damage done by these fools, and of course the loss of life is unforgiveable, but I think you’re correct in your assessment that a democrat would have inherited an, almost, impossible situation and the neo-cons would have been in constant attack mode. As much as it pains me to agree w/ you, it may eventually prove to be a good thing that Bush got his second term.
But would a Republican-controlled Congress have helped Kerry? Or would they have resisted his initiatives, all the while playing the rancorous partisan card? Look at how they treated Clinton, even before the special prosecutor’s inquisition.
I believe that anything that went wrong on Kerry’s watch would be blamed on him no matter how thoroughly it was rooted in the damage done during the Bush administration. I also believe that once Saddam was toppled civil war in and eventual partition of Iraq would be inevitable, if not ab initio, then certainly growing out of the royal clusterfuck of post-invasion administrative failures which preceded the 2004 elections.
My point, EddyTeddyFreddy, points out is that he wouldn’t have been able to fix any of these problems, especially with a Republican controlled congress.
On Iraq, public opinion only recently in the past year or so, really headed south. Prior to a year ago, a lot of polls showed a slim majority of Americans cautiously optimistic and remember that right around the election in the US you had elections in Baghdad that looked promising and the military was talking about troop cuts.
Look at Katrina, there is no way a new president would have been able to rebuild FEMA in the short period after the elections until the hurricane. The agency had been pillaged and it will take some serious heavy lifting to get it back on track, but a Kerry president would have taken office and kept FEMA largely as he had inherited it by the time the hurricane hit.
Marley23 you ask why anyone would believe Republican critics of a Kerry administration, but look at what people have believed (or enough of them) about WMDs, Iraq and 9/11, the war on Christmas, etc., etc., etc., etc.
I’ve come to think of our experiment with an all GOP controlled government as some kind of illness that will have to run its course before the nation can come to its senses.
Sure, it’s a bit nutty. What you mean is that there is no rational, reasonable, honest or decent way for blaming anyone other than the GOP.
That’s the Democrat in you. By contrast those very factors would heighten the delight of the GOP when they did blame it on a Democratic Congress / Clinton & etc.
Have you noticed the Bush arguments have gone quiet of late. There is no relic of a suggestion that this is the party of reason or accountability. No, the naked skeleton of R-W USA is there: ‘The people are rubes or thugs and we’re the party with the cash and TV stations.’
I hate to agree with the OP but there is some merit to the argument. The situation in Iraq is utterly hopeless and getting worse, there is little Kerry or anyone else could have done other than accept the blame for things getting worse. The only way to really stop the blood is many more troops, many more troops = bring back the draft, bring back the draft = political suicide.
I cannot believe that Kerry would not have done better than Bush in dealing with Katrina. Nobody could expect someone to rebuild the city in a year, but certainly Kerry’s people would have been watching the news and known that people were dying awaiting help, and then they would have moved heaven and earth to get relief in there.
I don’t agree with the OP at all. In re-electing Bush the American people ratified his invasion of Iraq. Better that we had elected Kerry, repudiated the proppriety of the invasion, and then seen Kerry make a muddle of it for four years and then get replaced with some relatively sane Republican. Even (Og help me) George “Macaca” Allen with Rick Santorum for Veep.
At least we would have sent the message “You don’t do this. You don’t get to do this. You get sacked for doing this”.
Exactly. Why is it better to have elected a guy who will continually fuckup just so that his party will be held accountable? Sounds nice on paper, but not if you have a son that died in Iraq, or a mother that died in Katrina, or if you are currently being fucked over by a number of things Bush has done since being re-elected. I don’t know if Kerry would have been a good president, but he could hardly be worse. Why on Earth would I want an inferior person in such a powerful postion? I’d rather be happy than be right.
No, of course not. But I don’t see how the results would have been worse than what they are.
I suppose that a President who paid attention would have done better, and I’m considering it possible that Kerry would have staffed FEMA with competent people, not friends.
A Presidential term is four years long. The war on Christmas lasted a couple of months, people believed in the Iraq war for about two years.
This is kind of a passive-aggressive method of “governing”. The idea is, it doesn’t matter how badly the country goes down the shitter, as long as MY party doesn’t get blamed for it.
When exactly would you expect the Democrats to govern again? OK, in 2004 Kerry would be blamed for losing Iraq even though the debacle in Iraq is clearly Bush’s fault. You think it’s going to be easier in 2008? In 2012? If you believe the Republicans are the party of misrule, the longer the misrule goes on the harder it will be to clean up the mess. Or should Democrats just hand over the Presidency to the Republicans forever, on the grounds that at least that way the Republicans will always take the blame?
Might as well disband the Democratic party at that point.
Although I voted for the man, and hate many/most of the things Bush has done while in office, I don’t think Kerry would’ve made a good president. They were both piss poor choices, with Bush being the more reprehensible, but given my lack of enthusiasm for Kerry, I am somewhat relieved he lost. Despite all the additional damage W has caused, at least the chickens are coming home to roost, and his transparent dishonesty, incompetence, and genuine cluelessness (not to mention contempt for the Constitution) are becoming increasingly undeniable–and the GOP has nobody to blame but itself. Given what a joke Kerry was in the face of the Swift Boaters, he would’ve been a lost cause against a right-wing Congress within the first few months, and the Republicans would’ve had a convenient target to distract the country from their own ineptness.
My point is that by GWB getting re-elected will ultimately be good for the country because it will expose the bankrupcy of the GOPs agenda. Had Kerry been elected, we would be in the same messes we are in now, but GWB would have gotten a pass from a portion of the populace.
A one-term Kerry administration could have lead to a Jeb Bush administration in 2008, God help us. Now, I think we can finally put to death the political life of the Bush family.
Also, if Kerry had been elected, people would still die in Iraq, even if you felt a vote for Kerry was a vote for an immediate pull out (nothing he said would indicate that, btw) it still wouldn’t happen overnight. Believe me, I know about dead folk in Iraq, check my location.
With Katrina, maybe his paying attention would have helped (almost certainly would have), but Bush turned FEMA into a corrupt agency for awarding cronies cushy jobs, the staff wasn’t really there to do a good job and Kerry would have taken the blame.
I don’t just think a second Bush term is good for the Democrats I think it is good for the nation, in that America is learning the tough lesson of having to live with one’s mistake.
I think that there are inherent contradictions with GOP philosophy just as there are inherent contradictions with communism. And as with communism, the utter collapse of the philosphy was necessary to demonstrate how unworkable these ideas are.
Lemur866 makes a good point: if a Democrat gets elected in 2008 and begins a withdrawal from Iraq, what makes you think Republicans won’t convince at least some voters that it would have worked if he had just waited? Vietnam ended almost 35 years ago, and I know of Republicans who insist we would have won the war if not for the peace movement.
