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player ready...The Democrats are right: This election pits progressives against reactionaries.
Except that Democrats are wrong to think that they’re the progressives.
If this sounds too stupid to be taken seriously, consider some election issues and who best fills the definition of a progressive: Someone who promotes progress toward better conditions through new policies and ideas.
If anyone is stuck in old policies and ideas, it’s Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. President Bush offers ideas that are more creative, innovative and imaginative.
On Social Security, Bush proposes something different, personal retirement accounts. Kerry stubbornly sticks by the same old and tired solutions, without providing a clue about how he would not cut benefits or increase taxes. Oh, yes, he’d hold a “summit,” but doesn’t much say what the summit would discuss.
Bush proposed and enacted faith-based initiatives, unleashing the energies of thousands of faithful who take seriously the Biblical injunction cited by Kerry: Love thy neighbor. The best that Kerry summons up in response to Bush’s initiative is a lame “Me too.”
Bush is the first president to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Kerry, blinded by ideology, fails to acknowledge the superior promise of adult stem cells–as does Bush.
On Medicaid, Bush gave states greater flexibility, which, along with the Children’s Health Insurance Program, extended the health-care program to 2.6 million low-income Americans. Kerry offers nothing as comprehensive.
On education, Bush pushed through the No Child Left Behind Act, historically expanding federal involvement and money in public education. Bush also wants to offer vouchers to liberate poor families trapped in failing public schools. Kerry’s answer is more of the same old failing policies, a politically motivated solution that won him the support of teachers unions.
On health, Bush proposes innovative health-savings accounts and seeks to reduce health-care costs through tort reform. Kerry opposes reform and the savings accounts, insisting on the threadbare idea of more money, more government.
On questions of life, Bush clearly is more progressive by seeking to extend the rights and benefits of personhood to the unborn. Kerry shares the appalling indifference of a nation that once regarded the owning of slaves–considered like the unborn to be less than human–as a matter of choice
On the most important issues of the election–security, terrorism, Iraq and foreign policy–the Bush doctrine has liberated tens of millions of people and extended humanitarian and civil rights to more women than most civil rights and women’s groups can claim.
The Bush doctrine has made the world safer, ridded it of two of its most brutal regimes, frightened Libya into giving up its nuclear weapons program, and let every other idiot dictator in the world know that we mean what we say. Bush, more than any other president since John Kennedy, has carried out his promise to pay any price and go any place to ensure the blessings of liberty.
Kerry would call a summit. Kerry gives little thought as to what the summit would be about, other than try to please our “allies” who are jealous of America’s power, don’t share our vision of spreading freedom and democracy, and who collaborated through a corrupt UN Oil for Food program with the enemies of liberty. Kerry wants international sanctions against Iran to stifle its nuke program, but doesn’t say what he would do if the sanctions, as happened in Iraq and elsewhere, fail. He would call a quick NATO summit on the Middle East, but doesn’t say what he’d do if the summit failed to stir European nations into action. He’d replace Bush’s six-way talks with North Korea on nuclear proliferation with bilateral talks, but doesn’t say what he’d do if the talks fail, as they did with the Clinton administration.
Bush, in being more innovative and progressive, takes the more risky approach. Once, the Democratic Party was the risk-taker, but Kerry’s lack of vision and retrograde dependence on 50-year-old ideas turns the party into one that huddles behind the ramparts and promises to lower the drawbridge and venture out only when we get the high sign from the “world community.”
On the domestic front, Kerry’s only vision is the threadbare campaign of class warfare, virtually indistinguishable from the rhetoric of the 1930s. Instead of looking for creative approaches, he applies the barren standard that only ideas that punish the rich have merit. Kerry is all process and no substance. Bush moves directly to goals; Kerry wanders about, without a compass, moral or otherwise.
Still think that the idea of Bush being more progressive is ludicrous? Well, it’s no more ludicrous than believing that Kerry, as he claims, would do a better job of making America more secure.
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