Why I'm not voting for Bush

Up until recently, I was one of the many undecided voters. It was interesting to hear news stories and commentary about undecideds. The pundits wondered how we could still be choosing when the differences were so clear. They don't seem to understand what is going on in our heads.

The fact of the matter is that the candidates bellow about issues and sling accusations and none of us our listening. Recently, I complained how poorly I thought Kerry did in an interview on NPR. What we are looking for is not answers to the issues, because we find them too complex. What we are looking for is a leader who we can trust these issues with. We want to 'connect' with the candidates so we can trust them. The best part of the debates was Kerry and Bush complementing each other on their families.

So, unable to 'connect', I'm left making my choice based on facts of trustworthy leadership. Unfortunately for Bush, he has a track record to judge, and I don't particularity like it. He made a decision to invade Iraq that I trusted him to make. It may have been the right decision, but I am suspect of the reasons why.

The fact that he and Powell sound like they had satellite photos of WMD activity the way Kennedy had pictures of Cuba is upsetting now that there has been very little evidence of any threat at all. Instead, it seems that Saddam pushed him hard and he had to call the bluff. That's fine if he would admit it, but he won't. It appears that he has a chain of 'yes-men' who supported his decision with pseudo-facts and opinion. He would have been better to be like Marty McFly (in Back to the Future III) and just call him an asshole and ignore him.

And Bush failed to ignore why Saddam was such an asshole--it was the only way to keep Iraq in one piece. Now we have the threat of a real quagmire on our hands...and Bush refuses to see it as such.

(Would it have been a much better to spend the billions of dollars to help fight AIDS in Africa? Politically useless, with no real benefit for Americans, but money better spent, IMHO. )

So, based on past performance, I'm saying to President Bush "You're fired!" Or from a post at Closing the CRM Gap, that refers to the writings of Robert Heinlein:

There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.