What happened! It is 3:22 AM after election day and it appears that George W. Bush will continue as President. What happened? I have one friend who said recently that people will have to be morons to vote for Bush a second time around. Not that the Bush voters are morons, but maybe the rest of us are not as bright as we thought.
For most Americans, particularly Bush supporters, what they called the war on terror - what I call the war against Muslim extremism - was the paramount issue. The President tapped into the truth that a majority of Americans, in their minds, merged the Iraq war into the wider war on Muslim extremism. They were less appalled by the mess that has become Iraq than by the danger imposed by that wider war.
Bush asks a simple question. "Don't you feel safer with me as commander in chief?" Clearly the resounding answer has been yes. In spite of all the casualties in Iraq, in spite of the continued taunting of Osama Bin Laden, in spite of all the venality and self-serving words and outright lies of the administration there is one salient fact. We have not been attacked again. It does not mean we won't be attacked tomorrow, but George Bush cannot be denied when he says, "I kept you safe".
So, I go back to my wonderful dedicated friend who thinks it would be moronic to vote for Bush. If you remembered the day of 9/11, when you went to vote it might have been the smart thing to vote for the man who has not let another attack occur.
The other side is those of us who opposed Bush. We nominated a flawed candidate who never came out with a principled position on the Iraq war. He came out with an aggressive position in time for the debates, but all the time leading up to that point in the campaign he did exactly what he was accused of doing. He flip flopped on the war.
My opposition to Bush was based on his failures. He failed to protect us from the original attack. He failed to find fault with any of his subordinates. Not a single person of rank lost their job. He failed to complete the job in Afghanistan. He failed to achieve a diplomatic consensus for the move into Iraq and he has failed to bring peace to that beleagured country. I believe when you fail in you job, you should be fired. I was willing to put my hopes on a candidate who was flawed from the very beginning who mostly spoke like a professor of philosophy, picking and pulling at every thread in his speeches until you were never sure what he was talking about. I who hated the schoolyard bully attitude of the Bush people supported a candidate who wrapped himself up in his Vietnam military record and made his personal militarism the centerpiece of his campaign.
Whose vote was cast moronically?
Melvyn Polatchek
3:52:34 AM 
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