Yes, this sounds like it should be put in Great Debates, but I am looking for uncolored facts as much as possible, so I hope I will get those here. Please therefore do not respond with any information about decisions about emotionally polarizing issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc, even though they are, of course, a part of the full answer.
I have a friend who will be voting for George W. Bush. She thinks he’s terrific, however she doesn’t seem to have any facts about why.
All the facts and figures and information I have gathered paint Bush in a very poor light. At this point, I am honestly confused as to why anyone would vote for him.
Since polls seem to indicate that there’s a fair number of people voting for Bush, I am assuming that they have information I lack. Although I can’t see anything at this point changing my mind, I feel that I cannot make a good decision in the voting booth unless I have full information on both sides. Please help me understand this.
Thanks,
HennaDancer
If you feel you or the country is better off now than four years ago, you should vote for the incumbent. That’s a rather valid way of supporting Bush that has nothing to do with knowledge of his positions.
Well, yeah, which is why I’m not. I don’t need this information to know that. But I think it’s better to have actual facts rather than to go with general feelings, and it bother me to have been able to find facts supporting one position when it seems the other is also popular.
That sort of strategy neglects to take into account that there are events outside of a president’s control that have some effect on the end result 4 years later. A more relevant question would be given the same set of circumstances, which person would make decisions you think are correct. This is a matter of comparing what one person did in the moment with what the other person says they would have done (now that they have the benefit of hindsight and don’t have the pressure of actually having any responsibility for the outcome).
This isn’t a “factual” comparison of two candidates, but only a matter of opinion about who you believe. There are some efforts to quantify performance on issues that have specific outcomes (e.g., the economy, etc.), but even then there are many circumstances present that are not quantifiable. It all comes down to whether you believe that someone else could have done better, and I don’t see how there can be a GQ answer.
But, I’m sure someone will be along shortly to tell me why I’m wrong.
There is no possible way to deliver an enormous set of “uncolored” facts in this forum to answer your question that is not biased by the views of the poster, especially in the brief time left before Election Day. Unless you have a specific question about George Bush’s record, i.e., how many jobs have been created or lost during the Bush Administration, you are better off doing at least one of three things:
1 - going to the Bush and Kerry websites and looking through for whatever “facts” you might be interested in;
2 - going to wesbites like factcheck.org and sorting through their analysis of those “facts;” or
3 - taking this to GD and letting the chips fall where they may, and asking for cites if you do not believe what people are saying.
The choice of whether to vote for Bush (or whether to vote Republican in general) is mostly a matter of values and beliefs. Most Bush voters have certain – usually unspoken – assumptions about what’s important. For example, property rights are very important – “what’s mine is mine.” The conservative positions on environmental regulation, zoning laws, tax cuts, welfare, and the minimum wage are all informed by the primacy of property rights. To the liberal and progressive camps, that’s not all that important. Sure, if you worked hard for something, you want to keep it, but the liberal mind places a higher priority on other things: fairness, equality, etc. The less intelligent (or less thoughtful) conservative may not be able to articulate his or her assumptions, but they usually recognize the candidate who shares them.
This is why facts do not sway most voters: for different assumptions, those facts lead to entirely different conclusions.
This thread is bound to get thrown into GD but I have to disagree with that. I think your position is at best an oversimplification which makes an empty campaign slogan . That logic presumes that the president alone is responsible for the state of the nation. It doesn’t consider how the president reacted to outside influences and what kind of leadership he provided and if he is likely to be a good leader in the future relative to his challenger.
How good he will be? Definitely an IMHO forum thread.
But
I’d say IF he gets the opportunity to be POTUS again. Since he will not have to worry about re-election. He can stop trying to play nice. He can push hard for the things he wants to accomplish in the next four years.
It’s not my position. I was responding to this: “At this point, I am honestly confused as to why anyone would vote for him.”
I’m not a Bush fan myself, but I am surrounded by Bush supporters, and these are the reasons I hear for why they support him (valid or not):
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They believe Bush’s tax cuts were good for America and benefited the middle class, and that he is the candidate most likely to not increase taxes in the future.
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They believe going to Iraq was an important and necessary phase in the overall war against terror. They believe that Saddam Hussein was a despot comparable to a potential Hitler, and that the responsibility for removing such dangerous despots naturally rests with the world’s primary superpower.
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They believe Bush is more interested in preserving “family values.”
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They think Bush comes across as a strong, no-nonsense leader.
This article in the New York Times (requires registration) suggests that many people may decide for whom to vote without fully understanding what that candidate stands for. This applies to either candidate, not just Bush. Many people make their decision based on endorsements, personality, or their stance on a single issue. Or they make their decision based on attack ads.
If there’s still time, the best way to find out what the candidates really stand for is to read the platforms of both parties. Some papers (including the New York Times) include issue guides, but the platforms include detailed information on everything from taxes to health care to national security. The Republican platform especially emphasizes national security, and includes quite a few security-related claims that one would do well to research further. The Democratic platform also has a lot on national security, and Kerry tended to speak from the platform quite often (the body armor thing, and the doubling the number of special forces thing are from the platform, as well as all the health care and education policies). Of course, anyone who hasn’t decided yet may not have time left to read a hundred pages and compensate for each party’s respective bias to guess where the truth might lie.
Bush is very unpopular internationally. I recently saw a journalist asking people on the street in Paris (and he also went to an American-style business school) who they would vote for, and the results were something like 90-2 against Bush. Canadians prefer Kerry over Bush by about the same margin that New Yorkers do, something like 5 to 1. I can think of two reasons for this: first, people internationally are probably more likely to have seen anti-Bush documentaries and not rejected them out of hand, since they don’t have an extensive pre-existing like of Bush. Second, political parties outside the US are positioned differently on the political spectrum; one UK publication I have, a reference atlas, refers to the Republicans as ‘right-wing’ and the Democrats as ‘right-of-centre’. Many other countries have a right-of-center party and a left-of-center party and some parties further off to the right and left. The result is that Bush looks far-right relative to the politicians they know.
Now, why do some Americans like Bush? (I will try to avoid opinion as much as possible.) A good place to start is these 2000 exit polls which explain why people voted for Bush in the first place. (The question ‘Which candidate can handle a world crisis?’ is frightening in retrospect; 65% said Gore could handle a crisis, versus 55% for Bush.) There are a lot of correlations, but religion is probably the most important – Protestants, and people who identify themselves with the ‘white religious right’, voted for Bush more often. People who attended religious services at least once a week voted for Bush substantially more often (by 2-1 if they attended more than weekly). Clearly, many people like Bush because they feel they can relate to him – because he’s a Christian (officially Methodist but tending towards a more evangelical view), or because they perceive that he’s a regular guy, a farmer, a rancher, a businessman, someone who likes to fish, someone who talks plain and simple – one or more of those, anyway. In many ways he is not a ‘regular guy’, since he was born into a rather privileged upper-class family and went to Yale, but he seems like one so much that many people can relate to him even though they could never borrow a few million dollars to start an oil company or invest in a baseball team. The other major reason people like Bush is his stance on national security; I won’t get into that since it’s difficult to be objective.
Finally, since most people didn’t know much about Kerry before he became the Democratic candidate, they may have been inclined to believe the caricature drawn by the RNC that portrays him as a flip-flopper. Essentially, the RNC claims that he’s bad because he’s not like Bush, which is a very faulty reasoning. They have two different ways of forming their opinions on a situation as it develops; neither is always good or always bad.
This is not a factual question. This is a debate.
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Darn. I was specifically looking for facts and not a debate, and I think we have for the most part done well with that. Is it a debate just because it’s politics?
Still, thanks to all who replied with facts. I really appreciate it.
What facts are you looking for, for crying out loud? It might be just as easy to throw out some facts about the universe, given the way you asked your question.
Facts: http://readythinkvote.com/
Point of clarification, please. Do you want only the positive side?
I think a belief that Kerry is incompetent, unreliable and a wimp is a large factor. And all the anti-liberal propaganda which more or less portrays democrats/liberals as being anti-american, wimpy and bad with money has had an effect on which of the two parties people are going to vote for.
Aside from that I would say that Bush is a man of principle who stands for what he believes in. He banned federal funding for stem cells, and he fought a war when the world tried to stop him. Some people found these things heroic.
His tax cuts probably appeal to people who support smaller government, especially when you consider that one of Kerrys priorities is using the FEHB program to give healthcare to about 27 million+ people.
I only personally know one ravenously pro-Bush person. This person isn’t voting on issues, just voting for the first reason listed. All the propaganda about democrats being wimps and anti-american has had an effect and since there are only 2 parties to pick from they’ve made their decision.
Bush is also the leader who led through 9/11. Kerry has no experience in international affairs yet. I remember in 2000 arguing with my family about how neither Gore nor Bush had any ‘real’ international experience. They said Bush had experience as governer of Texas since its on the border of mexico, I said Gore did since he was the vice president. But since Bush has had 4 years of experience and Kerry hasn’t had any people aren’t as likely to feel comfortable with Kerry in charge when we are at war with terrorists who have broad moral support in tons of countries all over the world. Especially when people are constantly saying Kerry is a wimpy, unprincipled person who supports whatever position is popular.