Ever since George W. Bush weaseled his way into the presidency in 2000, I’ve been waiting for the 2004 election. I’m just dying to unseat the canny Texan twit with his eight-year-old vocabulary bank. But it’s a sad day in America when a Democrat has to throw his support behind a Republican president for the lack of a respectable Democratic candidate.
I’ve heard the anti-Bush arguments that bash the president’s decision for going into Iraq, or even attacking Afghanistan. I’ve seen the protests to stop the drilling on Alaska’s wildlife reserve, and I’ve heard the neverending rants on how the new Medicare drug coverage plan is ineffective.
But all this criticism is coming at a time when our country is going through tremendous change. Today’s America is no longer the melting pot that it was in the 20th century. Today, the melting pot is barely open to those willing to have finger prints and a photo taken; more likely, you’d have to offer up your soul and kitchen sink to boot.
2000 was a lame election, with candidates who claimed to invent the internet and thought that people who came from Greece were known as Grecians – topping Dan Quayle’s 1989 comment that people in Latin America spoke Latin.
But Kerry, Edwards, Clark and Dean all support abortion rights, affirmative action policies and a plan to eliminate tax cuts for households with an income of $200,000 or above. They all oppose Bush’s voucher program, and all of them support gays’ rights to a civil union, but not gay marriage.
2004 is starting to look a lot more lame than 2000.
There is an amazing similarity between Bush and a chimpanzee. The problem with this election’s prospective opposing candidates is that all of them lack the wherewithal to actually beat a chimpanzee.
Lieberman fell flat on his face after a few short weeks in the hot seat. Dr. Dean has the right kind of liberal thinking that hasn’t been seen since Clinton came to office in 1992, but his verbal rants made him look like a beer vendor instead of a president.
Senator Kerry has the most political experience of all the candidates in this election, but I believe we’ve already had one too many snakes in the grass in our oval office. Clark and Edwards are excellent candidates – with nil political experience.
Bush is the only one deserving of this election. Why? Because he’s someone who’s been tested under fire and knows how to improve on his mistakes. Because he got Saddam, just like he originally stated, and freed a country from a terrible dictator. Because low-income citizens will now be able to get the prescription medicine they need. Because some time before November of this year, he’s going to pull Osama out of his pocket and present a videotape to the world with bin Ladin getting a prostate exam by an army doctor.
But the chief reason Bush will win is because the American public just doesn’t know any better. They want a candidate who they can have a beer with and a conversation about baseball. More importantly, all those people in Texas who clutch their bible at every Bush State of the Union speech already have their voting cards filled out. Let’s face it: it’s only four more years, and it can only get more interesting from here.
Slava Borshchukov can be contacted at s.borshchukov@umiami.edu.