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October 1, 2004

You Get What You Vote For

Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.

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I'm hearing a lot of people lately "reasoning" that Kerry will be just fine, because he "can't afford" to pull out of Iraq, "knows better" than to do so, or some other claptrap. I just have this to say: if John Kerry is elected president, it will be my fondest hope that he has noble goals for America and succeeds - particularly that he succeeds in defeating terrorism and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to terror-supporting states.

But, and this is a rather large "but", I don't expect it. When Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992, it was obvious to anyone paying attention that he was a relentlessly self-obsessed womanizer and a compulsive liar. Whether or not you think he was a useful or effective president, it's pretty hard to deny he's exactly what he seemed like during the campaign.

Similarly, Kerry has been quite consistent on a few points of both policy and character. A Kerry administration would shrink from conflict where America's interests were at stake, would abandon our coalition partners and suck up to the French and Germans instead, and would give the UN an effective veto over US foreign policy. Kerry would shrink the military, stop or dramatically slow procurement of new weapons and equipment, hobble our intelligence services, allow Iran to get nuclear weapons and quite probably withdraw from Iraq before actually securing a victory there. Kerry would always choose bigger government and higher taxes over all other considerations, and would do his best to enact the most Leftist agenda ever attempted by a president. All the while, he would smugly enthuse about how all of us proles just don't understand his intelligence and nuance. Kerry will claim that everything good is his doing, personally, and everything bad is the failure of some underling or political opponent.

Go ahead and vote for him if you think that's best, but don't go acting all surprised later.