Kerry and Bush in the balance.
John Kerry has been something of an enigma, but with his speech tonight, he pokes his head out of his shell. The Democratic presidential candidate spoke tonight at the Boston convention. (*) George W Bush will headline the Republican National Convention in New York, after the Olympics and before the anniversary of 9/11.
How should independent thinkers weigh and balance the candidacies of Senator John Kerry and President George Bush?
Kerry does not uphold classical marriage strongly enough. His non-opposition and tacit support of the insitutionalization of gay marriage is troubling. So is, in a more symbolic way, his choice of a non-American musical act (albeit one highly popular in America), U2, to close out his speech tonight. Couldn’t he have found an American band he liked?
Open borders is a bad policy, but Kerry and Bush are almost the same on that issue. Kerry lacks vision in his non-support for space exploration. His gung ho desire to destroy human embryos for stem cell research, when adult stem cells would work just as well, undermines his claim to uphold values. He has no ability to pay for his proposed universal health care, or to make such a thing work in free market America.
The Kerry tax policy is unimaginative, and does not promote individual savings or business investment, as Bush’s does so effectively. The Bush tax cuts are working. The Bureau of Economic Analysis finds that in the last three quarters, private investment, an important key to economic growth, has rocketed forward like Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. (†) Meanwhile, real economic growth is steady and climbing. (‡) Strong job growth will occur in the future. The Bush tax cuts are having a large effect, but a lot of the new employment thus far in the post–9/11 recovery is undermined by the open borders immigration policy (new immigrants taking many of the new jobs), and the outsourcing of jobs offshore.
To his credit, Bush contemplates a national sales tax (§) to promote individual savings at a time when the Social Security crisis is about to hit. A key economic problem in the US for several decades now has been the strikingly low savings rate of our country. This accounts for the dreaded trade deficit. Bush has a bold idea to vigorously promote individual savings just when we need to promote individual savings. Kerry’s tax policy needs to get more creative than just “soak the rich.”
To the benefit of the continued existence of America’s large middle class, Kerry would not allow the estate tax to expire. Kerry would raise the threshold limit. Bush wants the “death tax” completely out of the picture. Bush’s plan would probably create a small leisure class that would never have to work, ushering in a new gilded age.
Norably, Kerry would wisely reduce the federal subsidies for businesses that outsource their workforce offshore. That’s better than Bush’s inaction.
Kerry’s strong commitment to the environment is good, perhaps even too good. While Kerry might not strike the right balance between the environment and market activity, the problem with President Bush is his lack of any balance on the issue at all. Unlike his father, this President Bush has paltry environmental achievements.
With great foresight, Kerry focuses like a laser on securing the world’s stockpiles of nuclear materials. (**) Would he have the leadership and the courage to preemptively invade Iran should that prove necessary to stop that terrorist state from building nuclear weapons? Maybe and maybe not. Now that Bush has spent much of his political capital on the Iraq action, he might not either.
In foreign policy the greatest challenge is the Global War on Terrorism. The next President must finish the job with honor in Iraq and Afghanistan while securing good outcomes, stop the Iranian regime from building nuclear weapons, liberate Persia, deal with Saudi Arabia, and handle North Korea to encourage reunification. Then he must put China on the path to freedom, restruture the US intelligence community, rethink America’s role in international institutions like the UN, reconsider the policy of multiculturalism, and develop a national policy specifically on Islam. Gaining the upper hand in the Global War on Terrorism is critical to everything, foreign and domestic both.
How do we win the war? President Bush does not have a clear plan to win, nor is there one in this Administration that can be seen beneath the murky vapors.
John Kerry’s war plan is even more vague. Yet, John Kerry will do one big thing that George W Bush, with his close ties to the energy industry, perhaps cannot. Kerry will try in a real way to achieve US energy independence. If new technology could cut world oil expenditures by half, let’s say, that would make a huge difference. It would put a terrific cash squeeze on the Islamic oil wealth that ends up funding terrorism. Working for US energy independence can’t happen unless we invest billions of tax dollars on new science and technology in this area. It’s not guaranteed that scientists can pull it off, but they just might, and we will not know until we try.
Bush’s policy for energy independence is ineffectual because it assumes we should continue to be dependent on foreign oil. Drilling in ANWR will not free us of of foreign oil dependence. True energy independence requires a bold change.
Working to become energy independent would probably shorten the war. Kerry will work for real energy independence. Bush will not.
Advantage: Kerry.