conservative Charley Reese supports Kerry

Vote For A Man, Not A Puppet

Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush's re-election,
they are really voting for the architects of war - Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative
ideologues and their corporate backers.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely
a front man, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his
administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of
any president in my memory.

It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take
away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans
should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more
fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint
press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to
think, and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's
comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate
that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to
adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.

But Thomas Jefferson said it well, as he did so often, when he
observed that "people who expect to be ignorant and free expect
what never was and never will be."

People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display
their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as
far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he
won't fool me twice.

It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly
increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the
rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobs is
good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don't matter, and that
people should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the most
prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century. His
administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian.

It's no wonder that the Justice Department has convicted a few Arab-Americans
of supporting terrorism. What would you do if you found yourself arrested and a
federal prosecutor whispers in your ear that either you can plea-bargain this
or the president will designate you an enemy combatant and you'll be held
incommunicado for the duration ?

This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because
Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost restarted the
Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not only hated in
the Middle East, but it has few
friends anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness
of the Bush administration.

Don't forget, a scientific poll of Europeans found us, Israel, North
Korea and Iran as the greatest threats to world peace. I will swallow
a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White
House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it.

Go to Kerry's Web site (http://www.johnkerry.com ) and read some of the
magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more
to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.

Besides, it would be fun to have a president who plays hockey,
windsurfs, rides motorcycles, plays the guitar, writes poetry and
speaks French. It would be good to have a man in the White House
who has killed people face to face (in war). Killing people has a sobering
effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.
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© 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.