And with that Bin Laden blunder, Bush has gone 0 for 3 in these debates. I'm going to skip stuff I've seen other people hit, and then get to some real gut-level honesty about how I feel here.
Pell Grant Bait And Switch
Bis attitude towards Osama Bin Laden wasn't the only instance of a fuzzy memory. His statements on Pell Grants are similarly revealing. Bush seems to think he's expanded the grant system, and in a certain sense this is true. More students do access them than before, but Bush also cut funding from these core higher-ed grants.
But wait, you might say, this year he kicked in $33M. That's true, but what's also true is that previously he cut $270M, for a net cut of $237M. Music for America's own Mike Connery was on this back in January.
Talk about your bait and switch: Bush slashes $270 Million, then gives back $33 (probably because it's an election year), has more kids divvy up this diminished stash of aid, and goes off crowing about how he's "expanded" the Pell Grant program. Chant it with me now: "Bull-shit. Bull-shit. Bush-it..."
Bush on Health Care: Let Them Eat Cake
One of the most spectacularly unsatisfying moments in the debate was when Bush attacked Kerry's health care plan.
He made baseless scaremongering attacks that it would restrict choice, require "rationing" and lower the quality of service. He repeated an old saw that America's health care is "the envy of the world."
This entirely mistakes the nature of the crisis.
America's health care is not only "the envy of the world," it's also also the envy of close to 50 Million Americans. There are nearly 50 million citizens of this nation we call home who have no coverage. Bush's answer to this problem is to tout the quality of the very system from which they are locked out.
It reminds me of nothing so much as French (yeah, you heard me, French) aristocrat Marie Antoinette's reaction to the news that the people of Paris had no bread: "well then let them eat cake!"
Bush Doesn't Want To Answer Questions About Roe v. Wade
When a question was directed to him about his stance on Roe v. Wage, Bush cut moderator Bob Scheiffer off before he could finish asking and gave back an answer to a question that wasn't asked about litmus tests, using about 8 of his allotted 120 seconds so bluntly state he doesn't favor them. Kerry gave a full and content-filled answer, centering around not "legislating [enforcing with the government] his personal articles of faith." Kinda showed the Dubya up there a little.
Bush is deathly afraid of being asked about abortion directly. Why? Because he can't say he wants to get rid of Roe, because it will cause many women to turn against him. He also can't say he's for preserving it either because it will cause massive discord in his base of religious fundamentalists.
So he cut the moderator off for the second debate in a row in order to duck the question. Classy.
The Draft, Again
Kerry's answer on the draft would be to allocate the money to bring on board 40,000 more troops to take the stress off the army and get guard and reserve guys/gals out of long tours in the middle east. He then says the real solution to the looming spectre of the draft is solid international participation. I couldn't agree with that more, and by recent accounts, if we were to ease up and change course, we might get surprisingly good results: the Germans have said they'd reconsider their relationship with Iraq if the US's attitude about the whole thing were to improve.
Bush, for his part, said it was a matter of training Iraqis. Never mind that this is going very poorly, that the security situation is so bad that prospective trainees are getting blown to bits waiting in line to sign up, and that there isn't sufficient screening to prevent the new guardsmen from being infiltrated by insurgents. He says we'll have it done in a couple months; right after the election and in time for Christmas. Ho ho ho.
Ultimately of course the Iraqi people need to provide security for their own country, but we're not going to be able to make that transition in the midst of an insurgent rebellion. We need to gain the international legitimacy, end the profiteering, cool down the rebellion and build trust that the new government will not be a puppet of the Pentagon. Then and only then will things be stable enough to hand it over and get out of dodge.
Articles of Faith and Strong Women
Many have called it fluff, but I thought the talk of faith and women provided a real interesting contrast. There were fewer talking points at play here. Both guys talked about how their faith guided them, but Kerry made a point to mention far out shit like getting blessed by some Native Americans and the fact that "not believing" is a central right of Americans. Bush, for his part, sounded kind of disappointed when he said "whether you believe in an almighty, or not." Annoyingly like a dad who doesn't approve of what you're doing.
On the part about women, Bush apparently learned good posture and not to make faces, and he broke his word to his wife too. His section talking of his wife and family, while clearly heartfelt, was full of laughs, and kind of condescending in that "not quite sexist but you can see why he doesn't think equal pay is a big deal" kind of way. Reminded me of barbecues with my more redneck family in-laws and how they relate semi-derisively to their wives, who in real terms hold the whole thing together.
Kerry made the obligatory joke about his wife's fortune, but then said something relatively genuine about his mom passing away and "integrity, integrity, integrity." He also showed he was smart enough to know he often takes himself too seriously, and that he values his woman's ability to call bullshit on him. I can relate to that, and I liked it.
Closing statements weren't all that special. I do think it's classy that Bush asks for people's votes. I also liked how Kerry asked for people's trust. I really liked that their families mingled for a bit afterwards, especially because there was enough hesitancy in the first touches that you can realize it wasn't planned.
End of Spin; What Does Josh Really Think?
To be honest this is all a little boring these days. However, I thought this was an interesting debate for Kerry. His talking point attacks on Bush were the same -- and still, I feel, relatively unimaginative and kind of soft -- but when he talked of faith and family the were bits where he would try and get at the nature of public service in the kind of clumsy way that smart people have when they're trying to get across a rather big idea that's totally central to how they live their lives, but which they don't yet know how to express succinctly.
Public service is kind of an antiquated idea in this spin-driven world of mass media politics and consumer market ideology, and that's a shame. Personally it's someting I believe in quite a lot. Seriously. Check it out:
I didn't take this job and work 70 hours a week for a year because it was the best way to advance my career or make money, just like I didn't start spending huge amounts of time last year working (for free) to help out the Dean campaign for some mean personal gain. I did these things because I was following a path of what seemed like the right thing to do, for the world, for my future, for my family and my friends.
There are lots of people out there who feel the same way, and this is a real thing, but often it gets lost in all this crazy back-and-forth we call campaigning. But this is what it's all about, trying to make it better for everyone as a matter of our purpose for living, and this is a real difference between the two candidates.
Both are silver spoon trust-fund babies to some extent, but Bush seems to think he's entitled to what he's gotten in life in spite of his history of irresponsibility and failure. He's imbibed enough right-wing ideology that he thinks people who are poor deserve to be poor, that people who "won't speak English and live in inner cities" somehow want to be drains on society, that massive inequity is not really his problem, even as President. Let the good times roll. Let them eat cake.
Kerry, for all his quasi-pompous aloofness, seems to come from the other mold of privilege: that great wealth, education and opportunity entail a life of responsibility and service. He believed in this enough to volunteer to go to fucking Vietnam, and he believed in it enough to make a personal enemy of Richard Nixon (at the age of 27!) by coming back and working to end the war.
In short, Kerry seems to be from the school of Noblesse Oblige, while I still harken back to Howard Dean's assessment of Bush that "he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple."
And then there's what Bush has done to this country. Honestly, I have a great deal of personal disgust and contempt for the changes Bush's administration has wrought upon us, particularly in the way they've used misconceptions and deceptive language to advance much of their agenda.
As someone who still feels most "at home" in New York City, I find the way in which he and his advisors were clearly more interested in the political opportunity presented by 9/11 than in combatting the actual threat of terrorism particlarly sickening. That's a rather dark conclusion, I realize, but it's the conclusion I've reached, and one I might add that is wholly supported by the facts.
For Kerry's part, there's no love lost. I spent the better part of 2003 working hard to see another candidate as the Democratic nominee. I still find Kerry's vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq a craven political surrender, and his manner and demeanor are certainly not to my liking. However, he's clearly got the spirit of Public Service, and he's done enough bad-ass things in the past (like front for Vietnam Veterans Against The War and crack the Iran-Contra Scandal) that I'm willing to believe he might show us something interesting if he makes it into office.
Mostly what attracts me to Kerry is the idea that we can start to work together as a country in solving some of our big problems. There is big time momentum outside this election to clean up politics and build consensus. McCain/Feingold was the first step towards good campaign finance law. The advent of small-dollar internet fundraising took it to the next level. Grassroots politics is back, and the most exciting prospect is that we might find some national unity this way in the next four years.
And so we're off to the races; may the best man win. Less than three weeks to E-day (though in most places you can start voting early next week). And rememeber, voting is the least you can do. Let's do something really cool to keep all this momentum going. Let's go another step along in taking the country back for the people.
In the end, it's not about parties and it's not about candidates; it's about finding a way to live in harmony as humans, and to try and make sure good things to happen way more often than bad. It's a big messed up world we're inheriting. Let's make it better.
