If you haven’t read the NYT Magazine’s lengthy profile of President Bush, I highly recommend it. One portion that’s been widely quoted, and has become somewhat of a rallying point for Democratic bloggers, is this:
The [senior Bush] aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: “Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, “Look, I’m not going to debate it with you.”
I’m sure that there are people who could read this profile of Bush and see in it much to admire—his faith, his decisiveness, his leadership, etc. But what I see frightens me, deeply. The messianic rhetoric, the impatience with facts (and the “reality based community” that cares about them), the inability to tolerate debate or challenge—these are not qualities that I want in my leader.
When I hear people talk about their support for Bush, I seldom hear them talk about his policies—his impact on the environment, on civil rights, on health, on social issues, on foreign policy (not just the war), on massive job losses and shrinking salaries, on the ballooning federal deficit. Instead, they talk about his personal characteristics—his leadership, his personable demeanor, his commitment to his faith.
But as John Perry Barlow points out, “Whatever it has been traditionally, this Presidential race should not be a personality contest. I say this as much to myself to myself as I do to you. I have to snap out of it and remember we are not electing our new best friend here.” Do I like Kerry? I don’t know. I’ve never met him. And at the end of the day, I don’t really care if I like him as a person. What I care about is the direction in which he leads this country.
What I want in a president is someone who doesn’t hire people like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and other dirty tricksters and corporate apologists. I want someone who cares about civil rights, who understands that the US doesn’t have (literally) a god-given right to dictate what’s right and what’s wrong worldwide, who won’t allow corporations to destroy our environment, who won’t fill the supreme court with justices who oppose a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body, who won’t try to pass a “Defense of Marriage” amendment to the constitution that forbids marriage between two people who love each other and who happen to be of the same physical sex, who won’t criticize “tax and spend” liberals while at the same time racking up record job losses and budget deficits.
If you’ve already made your decision about who you’re voting for next month, I doubt that anything I write here will change your mind. But if you’re an undecided voter, PLEASE take the time to learn about the candidate’s stands on issues that you care about. Public Agenda’s web site has issue guides on a wide range of topics that might matter to you. The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, and Issues 2000 all have sites that compare Bush and Kerry’s stances on key issues. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the candidate’s stances on the issues. Then make your decision based on policies, not personalities.
Please.
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