They want you to believe they're different. They want you to think they're like folk and opera - separate, distinct and so very different. But they aren't. They're George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, and one of them will be our next president. But it just doesn't matter, because the next four years won't be any different than the last four years regardless of which of these men is elected.
Why do I say this? Because there are meager variations in their backgrounds (can you say Skull and Bones?) and even fewer differences in their vision for America. From my perspective, their proposals for America's future are almost identical on every major political issue facing our great nation. From foreign policy and health care to education and civil liberties, Bush and Kerry - or Berry and Kush, as I prefer to call them - have dismal plans for our country.
Foreign Policy:
Regarding foreign policy, Kerry says he opposes the war in Iraq, but he doesn't. In fact, he wants to send more troops to Iraq and continue the war for the same period of time Bush wants to continue it. (Until either of them no longer has the capacity to deal with the issue.) How do I know this? Because Kerry ignored the constitutional provision mandating that Congress declare war and gave absolute decision-making authority to our war-hungry president in October 2002.
Twenty-three of his colleagues decided to keep authority within the Senate, and voted nay. Kerry chose to vote aye because he believed in the war. In August of this year, he said that even if the intelligence we know today was known when he cast his vote in 2002, he still would have voted to give Bush authorization to go to war. Kerry has a record in the Senate of reckless foreign entanglements, like voting in 1999 to authorize the president to conduct military air operations and missile strikes in cooperation with NATO against Yugoslavia. In February this year, Kerry met with The New York Daily News and said he would have sent troops to Haiti in the early '90s - get this, even without international support - to quell a popular uprising against now deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Kerry is pro-war and always has been. So is Bush.
Health Care:
Kerry says he doesn't want universal health care. But if you go to his Web site, it's clear that he does. Bush, the small government candidate (yeah, right), says he wants Americans to decide on the issue. But last year he oversaw the most far-reaching and costly expansion of the federal government in our nation's history by encouraging Congress to vote for his Medicare prescription-drug bill (HR 1). It passed, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of the program will be more than $400 billion over the next 10 years. Just what Americans want: more government and less personal choice.
What about education, the most important issue facing America today? Bush supports his No Child Left Behind Act, which leaves every child behind by forcing unattainable testing and achievement standards for both students and teachers onto states. What does Kerry have to say on the issue? Well, he voted for the Bush plan. Actions speak louder than words.
Civil Liberties:
Here's a topic where the clones must differ! Not if you count Kerry's vote in support of the most sweeping anti-civil liberties bill in U.S. history, the USA Patriot Act. The legislation, passed by Congress (without reading the legislation, no less) a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, is an atrocious law that has given sweeping new powers to both domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies while eliminating checks and balances that formerly gave courts authority to assure that such powers were not abused. The Patriot Act expands all four traditional tools of surveillance used by law enforcement - wiretaps, search warrants, pen/trap orders and subpoenas. Bush signed this law and continues to defend his vote; Kerry voted for the bill.
Government Spending:
Spending is no different. The Bush administration has overseen a transformation from a $236 billion surplus to a deficit of nearly half a trillion dollars. Under Bush, government spending has grown nearly 29 percent over the last four years. The Bush administration has spent money twice as fast as Clinton (7.6 percent vs. 3.4 percent). And how many bills has "small government" Bush vetoed? Not one. Kerry, on the other hand, has rarely seen a spending bill he hasn't liked. His record in the Senate earned him, in 2003, vote ratings from The National Journal, of "perfect liberal" on economic rankings in the Senate.
His votes on social policy, I would argue, are not as "liberal" as they could be, however. For instance, Kerry supports civil liberties violations like the Patriot Act (like Bush) and supports banning gay marriage at the state level (whereas Bush wants it banned federally).
Instead of voting for more of the same, I'm going to vote for my hopes and dreams - for a third-party candidate. The candidate I select may not win this year, but America isn't going to win with either of the two choices the media and the two money-grubbing political parties have chosen to run our lives for us. I'm throwing out the Bush-Kerry coin and trading it in for a fresh one - a coin of hope, peace, prosperity and liberty. Won't you join me?
Aaron Biterman is a senior in the School of Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences.
