If by “boom”, you mean the biggest defecit in history and 3 years of absolutely dismal job growth that is only now maybe starting to reverse, would he want credit for that?
If three and a half out of four years of your presidency is spent in recession, then I think it’s odd that Bush should be given credit. I doubt that he deserves the blame for the recession, or the credit for the recovery. All he’s done to foment recovery is a tax cut that one can make a strong case against having much of an impact on the economy. The biggest impact on the economy over the next 6-12 months is likely to be oil prices. If the economy can overcome that hurdle then it will probably boom. The war in Iraq is such a mess it’s very difficult to say what net effect it’s had on oil prices, but I’d suggest that it’s pushed prices up to some extent.
I agree. In fact, I’ll find it a lot easier voting for Kerry (if I do) knowing that the Pubs will still control Congress. Gridlock is our friend.
I haven’t seen much commentary recently on the House/Senate races so the situtation may have changed, but a few months ago most of the pundits I heard were predicting a gain of 1 or 2 Senate seats for the Pubs and as many as 10 - 15 in the House. The redistricting in Texas is a big factor in the House gains. Anyone got some updated “expert opinion” on that?
I think Kerry’s best shot at being perceived as a successful President is not to be able to do much. (Assuming he is elected.)
The economy, as has been pointed out, is recovering. And the pundits and Dopers who excoriate Bush for his record will instantly flip-flop and start talking up the economy even if nothing about it changes.
As with most political discussion, you need to set it up so that your boy can’t lose. If Kerry is elected, and the economic recovery continues, it is because he did or didn’t do whatever he will try to do or not do. If the recovery fizzles, it must be because of the deficit and oil prices, both of which will be blamed on Bush. If the deficit increases, it will be because of increased spending by Bush. If it decreases, it will be because of Kerry not increasing spending, unless he does, in which case it will be because of increased spending by Kerry.
I believe Kerry has proposed spending increases that greatly exceed the amount of the Bush tax cuts. Thus, if both the tax increases and spending increases that Kerry wants get passed, the deficit, the tax burden, and the size of the federal government will all increase.
Fortunately, even if Kerry gets elected, he is likely to face a Republican-controlled Congress who can be blamed for all Kerry failures. Thus Kerry is likely to be unable to achieve anything much, except take credit for what the Republicans do that works.
My expected outcome for a Kerry Presidency is continued growth in spending, continued growth in the deficit, and a continued recovery. Kerry is not much of a legislator, and does not have any record of being able to get legislation passed. Thus he will be a mostly do-nothing President. Which is largely a good or neutral thing - the domestic economy is not affected all that much by what the President wants.
Foreign policy will be another matter.
Regards,
Shodan
Hmmm…
What can you say to a partisanship so intense that the OP hopes the country is ruined, if only the other party would get the blame for it?
After all, the really important thing is that the Democrats look good. If that means standing aside and letting the Republicans ruin the country then that is the correct course of action. I mean, what if a Democrat got into office, and the Republicans opposed him? And he couldn’t enact his agenda? That would be a disaster!
After all, how could a Democrat possibly run on their record? If they were in office everyone would hate them! The only solution is to nominate people who have never been in office and have no record of failure. On the other hand, why risk it? The Democrats should just avoid running candidates for public office for a generation or two, let the Republicans run things. Then everything will be ripe for their big comeback!
Um, hi. Professional political reporter here to help you out. 
There is no chance in hell the Democrats can take back the House. Privately, even Democrat leaders admit their plan for winning the house is a 4-year one, not two years. The Democrats chipped away at the GOP majority from 1994 to 1998, and right after that election, it looked like they could win it all. That didn’t happen. Instead, the GOP returned to a majority about the size of the one they had after 1994. Realistically, it’s going to be very hard for Democrats to win control of House before the next round of redistricting after the 2010 census. It’s not impossible mind you, just merely “very difficult.” But taking it back this year is, indeed, impossible. The most the Democrats can hope for is to cut into the GOP majority by a handful of seats.
The Senate is a different proposition. The balance is currently 51-49, if you count Jim Jeffords as a Democrat, which you should since he caucuses with them. A few months ago the situation looked bad for Democrats. Most of the open seats were in the South, which has been trending Republican for years now as Yellow Dog Democrats are dying off or retiring in spades.
That has changed now. It’s still an uphill battle for the Democrats, but the slope is nowhere near as steep. In some of the states, Democrats have established clear front-runners while the Republicans have found themselves with nasty primary battles. South Carolina is a perfect example of this. There are also several races outside the South that are key: Alaska, Illinois and Colorado. Democrats could easily win all of those, and I would say right now they are the prohibitive favorite in Illinois (Alaska and Colorado are toss-ups).
The only hopeless spot for Democrats is Georgia. Their field of candidates there is totally lackluster. Two House Republicans are running for the nomination there, and both are well-regarded.
Oh, and just so I’m not remiss, Oklahoma is a toss-up Senate race, too. The Democrat there, Rep. Brad Carson, is just conservative enough to win in a state like Oklahoma, which always votes Republican for president but has a legislature totally controlled by fairly conservative Democrats.
For a second there, I was hopeful you were talking about Inhofe’s seat. But, alas a quick google search showed it’s the other seat that is being contested. Damn!!!
I don’t want Kerry to inherit this mess, but I don’t want Bush making it even worse.
And you can be sure that, if Kerry does win the elections, all those self-professed patriotic “support the President” conservatives will be gunnin’ for him from day 1. I believe Richard Melon-Scaife already has the smear machine standing by on idle…
Oh horseshit. Why wait until after the election?
Regards,
Shodan
I have always found it kind of interesting that Bush apologists START by using sound bites, short clips, and slogans…
…until one points out the man’s shortcomings, mistakes, and failures…
…and THEN, allovasudden, we go into the land of complexity, facts, figures, charts and pie graphs, and long, detailed explanations about how Nothing Was The Shrub’s Fault.
How come Democrats aren’t allowed to do this?
In the meantime, yes, I don’t envy Kerry. Why, in potato’s name, he would WANT to be President and inherit the current insane mess, and deal with a largely Republican congress, and basically have to put up with the same nonsense Clinton did, but with more crapola… I don’t know. I sure wouldn’t.
…but, then, it ain’t about him. It’s about “not giving Bush another four years.”
I am a Republican, you see. I am a right-winger. I am not a liberal. I like the idea of personal responsibility, smaller government that’s not in my face, personal freedoms, lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, respect for others while maintaining a strong front, and so on.
And despite Bush’s claims of all this, most of his policies have been aimed in the exact opposite direction. He did lower taxes, mostly for the rich, at a time when the government’s hemmorhaging money like a firehose, and to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, “treated the Army like a rich kid treats a new Christmas toy.”
Bush does not give a damn what is best for the country, or for the people. He has an agenda, and he has made it clear that he will lie, cheat, steal, backstab, sneak around, and do whatever it takes to meet the points on that agenda, and he’s not even about to tell us what his agenda IS. I mean, come ON, people, this is the administration that declared that IT needed MORE secrecy, while the PEOPLE deserved LESS privacy! The needs of the country, the best interests of the nation, and the will of the people are nearly completely irrelevant to the man and his administration.
The only thing that’s even slowing him down right now is the need to be reelected so he can keep on doing it for four more years.
And if he IS reelected, what limits are there to what he can try to do? He sure won’t have to worry about reelection any more, and even the GOP is going to have rather limited influence over him. He will finally be in a position to tell not only the NATION, but his own PARTY: “Screw you all. I’m gonna do whatever the hell I please.”
And that scares the unholy hell out of me. I didn’t much care for Clinton, but I loved the fact that he and Congress were at each other’s throats for most of his presidency. Give me a government at loggerheads any day of the week, thank you.
It beats the alternative.
Well, there is that one bright spot, that happily demonstrates to the world the true value of a democratic system: we can change our mind. Having done so, we can change our government.
We have a lot of fence mending to do. Our reputation pretty much stinks. Let the world see that we can think it over, scratch our collective head, and make the right move.
There is, of course, a drawback: other nations cannot depend on a monolithic, unchanging US policy, when we have an election, all bets are off. I submit that this is as it should be. As well, our potential and current enemies cannot help but notice that the American people have the power. Each and every American voter has more power over international events than any single citizen of any other country. A sobering thought, to be sure.
Any number of snide charcterizations might reasonably be applied to Kerry: wooden, uninspiring, all the charisma of cottage cheese. But he damn sure ain’t no “cowboy”.
And yet–
surround him with slightly built guys in black pajamas, let them
spray bullets over his head, and the motherfucker turns into the incredible Hulk.
Why can’t we tap that inner Lou Ferrigno?
You’re comparing apples and wombats. Human behavior under conditions of direct violence of war is wildly variable. Note, as well, that Kerry’s most heroic acts were preservative of himself and his comrades, he was acting to protect himself and them, not exactly Sgt. Rock and his Death Commandos.
This is not to suggest that I think the less of that sort of courage. Far from it.
Can he save the day in Iraq? Probably not. Probably no human being can do that. But he would serve the country better than Bush. For instance, in the case of the torture scandals he would have apologized immediately and not reluctantly and gotten rid of Rumsfield, if he was President. I believe that he can handle situations like that intelligently. But as for actually establishing a democratic government in Iraq that becomes a shining example of peace and prosperity thus making Muslims the world over realize the error of their ways and rise up and overthrow the tyrants and establish modern societies, forget it. Kerry or Bush, we will eventually have to do in Iraq what we did in Afghanistan: leave behind a token force to control a small region of the country while letting most of the place disolve into chaos. It will hurt, but Kerry could lessen the pain compared to Bush by not embarrassing us with stupid decisions and poor speaking.
As for the budget, it’s a disaster for either of them. The Medicare Trust Fund runs out sometime around 2010-2011 and you can’t just inject huge amounts of money into it while we already have a huge deficit. But as others have said, Kerry and a Republican Congress would at least give us slower spending growth than Bush.
Not at all. He doesn’t have to do all that. He just has to turn the process over to the U.N., as he has said he will. The magic of that approach is that even if Iraq doesn’t turn out to be the most wonderful country ever, it won’t be the United States’ failure alone, it will be everyone’s failure. If Kerry can get us out of the corner that Bush has painted us into, it could very well have a positive effect on the rest of the world’s perception of us. And the beauty of it is that we wouldn’t be “giving up”; we would simply be adopting a true multilateral approach. It could get us off the hook without looking like a failure. It’s definitely worth a try.
The only way to get the UN in there is that we will have to be “giving up” all the huge profits to be made by American contractors. Halliburton, Titan, and so forth will have to be satisfied with a small slice of the pie because the contracts will have to be reopened and industries from other nations be given the work. If there isn’t any big money in it for UN nations, why should they bother? If we don’t share a big part of the take, we get to keep the whole shebang.
Also if these contracts come open to bids from the international market, I’m sure plenty of other US firms will also demand the right to bid as well on current and future contracts. And a lot of our $87 + billion will largely become a charity fund. I can already hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from here.
That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? Bush’s greed has made him try to go it alone in Iraq, and THAT’S why he’s failing miserably, and that’s why we need a new approach.
While there is clearly a character flaw in operation here, I very much doubt it is greed. More likely dat ol’ debbil hubris.
GeeDubya bought into one of our favorite made-for-TV myths: that some men whose lives and actions are largely mediocre have greatness hidden within them, that some crisis can arise and bring out unknown reserves of charisma and leadership. The ne’er do particularly well son is thrown into a desperate situation and rises to the occassion spectacularly, a rich slacker and failed business man transmorgified into a Leader of Men. Elmer Fudd channels Otto von Bismarck.
GeeDubya sees himself as firm and decisive, the truth is closer to stubborn and misinformed. I would almost feel sorry for him were I not so busy feeling sorry for us.
Right. I didn’t mean he’s literally greedy, but rather short-sighted in believing that unilateralism is always the correct course of action.