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to spout off with his incite-ful opinions.
apathetic, “It doesn’t matter who wins.” I’ve stated myself in this space that
there’s not much difference between the Republicans and Democrats and
voting is generally a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. But, as we
saw last November, an election can make some difference and it’s especially
true of a presidential election. As an example of this I’ll explore what the
difference would be if the Supreme Court hadn’t declared Bush the winner in
2000 and Al Gore had won that election.
As I see it there would be two big differences in Gore’s policies, one foreign
and one domestic, and we would have all been a lot better off for it. First of
all, we wouldn’t be in Iraq. This war has nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism,
it was just something on the wish list of Bush and his cronies so they used 9-
11 as an excuse to go for it. Gore would have concentrated our might in
Afghanistan against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, fighting our real enemy, and
kept us out of the mess that we’ve made in Iraq.
Second, I don’t think Gore would have allowed the steep tax cuts in the face
of federal deficits. This mainstay of Republican policy is nothing short of
irresponsible and short-sighted. Some people seem to think that our national
debt doesn’t matter. After all, the government prints the money--they can just
make more. But all of those trillions of dollars are borrowed and someday
they have to be paid back. How will we ever manage to do that when
politicians are constantly calling for still more tax cuts to ingratiate themselves
with the public? In the meantime, every year we have to pay interest on the
debt, now the second biggest item on the federal budget after defense.
I’m sure that there are countless other things that Gore would or wouldn’t
have done differently than Bush, but if just these two foolish policies had
been eliminated our country as a whole would be much better off.
We have a responsibility and a duty as citizens to run our country responsibly
by getting off our duffs once every couple of years or so to vote for the best
people to run our government. Unfortunately, the very best people are
generally too smart to want the job or too honest to do what it takes to win it.
But still, we have to be well-informed and vote for the best of what we’re
offered.
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