Chicago Tribune Endorses George Bush

Goodness, where do I begin? First, in general, let me just say how disappointed I am in the Tribune. While they are to be commended for having two moderate, reasonable voices—Stephen Chapman and Clarence Page—as its most prominent editorial-page columnists, when it comes time for the editors to show where they stand, they fall back on the partisan, reactionary position that the paper has historically maintained.

The Tribune invokes everyone’s favorite non-partisan, Senator John McCain, quoting him as saying “All of us, despite the differences that enliven our politics, are united in the one big idea that freedom is our birthright and its defense is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second. (If we waver) we will fail the one mission no American generation has ever failed--to provide to our children a stronger, better country than the one we were blessed to inherit.”

That’s all well and good, but then the Tribune proceeds to ignore an appallingly long list of egregious errors and misplaced priorities, and endorses George Bush as the candidate “most likely to deliver the more secure future that John McCain wishes for our children.”

The following is the Tribune’s key points, along with my rebuttal for each.

President George W. Bush talks more freely about what is at risk for this country: the cold-eyed possibility that fresh attacks…could ravage American metropolises. Bush, then, embraces a bolder struggle not only with those who sow terror, but also with rogue governments that harbor, finance or arm them.

Repeat after me, once again: Iraq neither harbored terrorists, nor financed terrorists, nor armed terrorists.

Sen. John Kerry embraces an ongoing struggle against murderous terrorists, although with limited U.S. entanglements overseas… Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results.

Kerry recognizes that America lacks unlimited resources, and thus can’t afford Bush’s doctrine of preemptive force in using military solutions to address every real and potential threat. And Bush’s plan is most certainly wider in scope and more ambitious in its tactics, so ambitious that its centerpiece was attacking Iraq, a country with no significant connection to Al Qaeda and without weapons of mass destruction. In doing so, he shifted the military’s focus away from Afghanistan and capturing Osama bin Laden, while generally ignoring rising nuclear threats in North Korea and Iraq and making little effort to secure fissile material in Russia.

The issue of casualties is unquestioned, with rising American death tolls in Iraq and rising anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab world. The Bush doctrine will indeed have “lasting results”, although it remains to be seen whether they’ll prove to be positive or negative.

There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned.

Yet Bush is unlikely to learn anything, given that he can't even admit making a mistake.

Bush, his critics say, displays an arrogance that turns friends into foes. Spurned at the United Nations by ‘Old Europe’--France, Germany, Russia--he was too long in admitting he wanted their help in a war. He needs to acknowledge that his country's future interests are best served by fixing frayed friendships.

Bush’s prewar disdain for the U.N. and his “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” position with Germany and France—demonstrated most vividly by the refusal to allow German and French companies to contract for lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq—shows he’s really not interested in those friendships, other than what other countries can do for the U.S.

Bush has nurtured newer alliances with many nations such as Poland, Romania and Ukraine (combined population, close to 110 million) that want more than to be America's friends: Having seized their liberty from tyrants, they are determined now to be on the right side of history.

It’s great that we’re developing new alliances. But they pale in significance to the “Old Europe” allies Bush has spurned. Germany, France, and Russia have three times the population and six times the wealth of his vaunted new allies Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

Kerry displays great faith in diplomacy as the way to solve virtually all problems. Diplomatic solutions should always be the goal. Yet that principle would be more compelling if the world had a better record of confronting true crises…

The Tribune’s lack of faith in the U.N. is rather obvious. Yet the Duelfer report on Iraq’s WMDs indicates that U.N. sanctions and inspections were working effectively—Saddam couldn’t restart his weapons programs even if he had wanted to.

Bush has scored a great success in Afghanistan--not only by ousting the Taliban regime and nurturing a new democracy, but also by ignoring the chronic doubters who said a war there would be a quagmire.

“Ousting the Taliban” is a stretch. “Temporarily displacing” would be more accurate, as the Taliban enjoyed a strong resurgence after the U.S. military’s focus was shifted to Iraq. Second, there may or may not be a new democracy in Afghanistan—as dubious elections around the world have proven time and again, letting the public go to the ballot box doesn’t necessarily mean that democracy will ensue. Lastly, there was never a chance of a true quagmire in Afghanistan, as the administration committed few U.S. troops, instead leaving the heavy fighting to the Northern Alliance, who proved to be much more interested in gaining control of Kabul rather than catching Osama bin Laden.

Invading Afghanistan was a good idea, but proved to be a major lost opportunity, as the administration lost focus on the primary goal of decimating al Qaeda in making the ill-dated decision to invade Iraq.

Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong.

“Arguably”? How about “Unquestionably”? Bush’s own post-invasion efforts to bring spurned allies into peacekeeping operations implies there were too few allies, and his own military officials said there weren’t enough troops to maintain order. Like Bush himself, the Tribune glosses over the fact that Bush’s two pre-invasion justifications—Saddam possesses WMDs, and Saddam was directly linked to al Qaeda and 9/11—were blatant falsehoods. And most of the intelligence relied upon came from U.S. sources, and there is evidence that Dick Cheney pressured the CIA to tailor their conclusions and recommendations to match the administration’s dubious pre-invasion claims.

Kerry, though, has lost his way. The now-professed anti-war candidate says he still would vote to authorize the war he didn't vote to finance.

First, Kerry voted for the war resolution to give Bush backing for his negotiations with the U.N., after Bush had assured Congress that he would exhaust all other alternatives before resorting to war. But Bush did not exhaust all other alternatives—the U.N. had inspectors on the ground in Iraq, and Saddam was starting to dismantle his longest-range missiles and was being held in check by the U.N.’s watchdogs—but Bush just couldn’t wait, and decided to invade anyway.

Second, Kerry voted against Bush’s appropriations request simply because he didn’t want to just hand Bush an $87 billion dollar blank check. Given that Bush’s claims of WMDs and al Qaeda links were already appearing suspect at that time, Kerry justifiably wanted some accountability from Bush on how the money would be spent. Kerry also wanted a rollback of Bush’s upper class tax cuts to pay for the appropriations, displaying the fiscal responsibility which Bush so wantonly disdains.

In critical areas such as public education and health care, Bush's emphasis is on greater competition.

His healthcare plan is little more than abandoning patients to the mercy of the insurance companies. Removing government intervention pits patients against monolithic insurers—which isn’t “competition”, it’s a rout. And his Medicare drug coverage does not allow the government to negotiate lower prices with the drug companies, who are free to set whichever prices they wish. Which, of course, isn’t competition, either. It’s monopoly.

His No Child Left Behind Act has flaws, but its requirements have created a new climate of expectation and accountability.

NCLB imposes strict standards, requiring minimum levels of achievement on standardized test scores. But students who do well on standardized tests aren’t necessarily learning valuable knowledge—instead, they’re learning how to take standardized tests. The next standardized test I take in the “real” (non-education) world will be my first. And Bush has sorely underfunded NCLB, leaving already-strained schools without the resources to comply.

To Bush's credit, his tax policies have had the aggregate effect of pushing Americans toward more savings and investment -- the capital with which the world's strongest economy generates jobs.

U.S. household debt is at an all-time high, and personal bankruptcies are steadily on the rise. Americans are borrowing and spending more, not saving and investing. Bush himself has said that his tax cuts were intended to get more money in the hands of Americans so they can spend it as they wish. Also, this economy is not generating jobs as quickly as the working population is expanding—and the jobs that are being created pay substantially lower than those that have been lost, and provide fewer employee benefits.

Today's Kerry is more about plans and process than solutions. He is better suited to analysis than to action. He has not delivered a compelling blueprint for change.

Kerry wants to restore and improve America’s standing in the international community. He wants Americans to have better and more affordable health care, better education through NCLB revisions and funding for Head Start and job training, environmental preservation (primarily a commitment to address global warming), a greater economic equality amongst America’s citizens. I'll take his admirable goals over Bush's disastrous policies any day of the week.

During the past four years, George Bush has not made us any safer. He considered fighting terrorism to be a low priority up until 9/11, repeatedly ignoring warnings from his own intelligence sources. He resisted the concept of a Department of Homeland Security, only reversing himself once the idea appeared popular with the public, and then proceeded to severely underfund airline and port security, as well as first responders such as paramedics, police and fire departments, and emergency room personnel. He resisted the formation of the 9/11 Commission, then grudgingly acquiesced before finally resisting most of the commission’s recommendations. He diverted America’s military focus away from neutralizing al Qaeda, our top current enemy, to invade Iraq, which did not pose a direct threat to the U.S. He eviscerated America’s fiscal health with tax cuts in the face of both recession and war, depriving the government from financial resources necessary to protect us from terrorists. His unjust war in Iraq fueled an enormous upsurge in anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, whose radical extremists are our greatest enemy. His war has cost over 1,000 American lives to date, and carries a price tag which will ultimately run into the hundreds of billions, money which could have been spent ensuring our security at home; it has also left our military spread too thin, unable to support containment of North Korea or intervention in Sudan, and with reservists and National Guard fighting overseas instead of defending our own shores. And he alienated the U.S. from most of its traditional allies, leaving us more isolated from the world community than we have been in decades.

Bush’s domestic policies are no better, primarily serving a small, elite fraction of the population.

This is the so-called leadership we’ve gotten from George Bush, and can expect in the future from him. Somehow, inexplicably, the Tribune considers this man to be the best choice to make America a stronger, safer and better place. In making their endorsement, the Tribune shows as little conscience or awareness as Bush himself.