An Infuriatingly Wimpy Message that “America Can Do Better.”
John Kerry’s acceptance speech somehow refused to go after President Bush’s record over the past three and a half years and instead emphasized the message, over and over, that America can do better.
What the hell does that mean? That America’s doing okay, but could be improved?
George Bush has broken every single campaign promise he made. He promised balanced budgets and immediately gave away a thirteen hundred billion dollar tax break that went overwhelmingly to the rich. He promised to bring honesty to the office and lied his way into war. He promised to leave no child behind and cut Head Start as well as entirely defunding Reading Is Fundamental, promised to protect the environment and pulled us out of the Kyoto Treaty, promised to reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the world and cut funding for antiproliferation programs, promised to protect our wild places and opened national forests to logging roads, promised to reduce industrial pollution and rolled back provisions of the Clean Air Act, promised the “W” in his initials stands for women and closed the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach, on and on go the broken promises.
George Bush changed a fifty year U.S. foreign policy strategy from deterrence to preemptive strikes and military dominance, all but trashed our relationship with the United Nations over Iraq policy, estranged the United States from its core of European support, refused to fund the United Nations Population Fund, created an Operation TIPS program for Americans to spy on each other, all of this shrouded in his declaration of “providing strong leadership in time of war.”
Damn it, John, are these some of the areas in which you think America “can do better?”
If you think the Republican Convention is going to follow the Dem’s lead of taking the high road, you’re not only going to be surprised, but you’re going to get walloped in November. There’s a record to look at over the past four years, specific areas in which George Bush said one thing and did another and you owe it to your country to point them out. This election has become too focussed on the Iraq War and the Bush administration would be delighted to keep the focus off its other broken promises.