A wise man once said:
“Leadership is not about doing what’s popular, it’s about doing what’s right in spite of what’s popular.”
Unlike the New York Times which wasted a whole endorsement bashing the President, I will make my endorsement of the President for re-election without mentioning Kerry in any capactiy whatsoever. In other words, unlike the Times, my endorsement will be of the President and explain why it’s for the President, instead of for the President and then go on and on about what’s wrong with Kerry.
When the President took office in January of 2001, the United States was coming off one of the worst stock market crashes in recent years. The .com bubble had burst, the artificially inflated stock market of the 1990′s was in the midst of the biggest and fastest correction in history, and because of numerous legal challenges didn’t even have a cabinet fully in place until right before his innauguration. A crashing headstart to his presidency.
In 8 short months this country went from discussing the election and going apoplectic over Chandra Levy to being attacked in the most devastating fashion ever in the history of this country. 3,000 dead americans in an attack that, according to every report of the 9/11 commission and every interview the commissioners have given, blindsided us.
But 9/11 did more than kill 3,000 people. It began a spiral downward that this country could very easily have collapsed under. Unemployment soared. The stock market plummeted. But we recovered. Slowly. Then the accounting scandals hit. Before one single budget of the President could be passed, the economy was already spinning out of control. Those same companies that made up the artificially inflated market of the nineties, and one that some people still pine for, were found to have committed massive fraud. Enron, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Adelphia. One by one, they fell, and the market reacted again and again. Unemployment kept going up.
And we survived. We’ve added almost two million jobs since then. Unemployment is at approximately 5.4%, which statistically is only .3% higher than what is considered “full employment.” Our GDP grew a whopping 3.3% in the third quarter of 2004. Instead of curling up and failing, we returned. Instead of staying unemployed, people opened new businesses. Big ticket item purchases were up dramatically last quarter, including cars. New home construction is up. Minority home ownership is up.
Every indicator shows that despite the dire predictions and the absolutely idiotic comparisons to the great depression, the country shrugged off terrorist attacks, stock market corrections, and accounting scandals, and in the end will lose a net of about 800,000 jobs over the toughest four years this country has faced in decades.
That’s what leadership is about.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban is not in control of the government. Elections were held, and Hamid Karzai will retain his leadership of Afghanistan, winning 95% of the vote. 4 years ago, Mullah Omar was blowing up Buddhas that were thousands of years old and carved into the sides of mountains. Women were being excecuted in soccer stadiums for not wearing burqas.
In a climate that caused Russia to retreat, the US eliminated a government that was harboring Al Qaeda, replaced it with a fledgling democracy, and is actively helping the Afghani people establish a true representative government. We are still there today. Things are not easy, but it would be hard to argue that the Afghanis were better off under the leadership of the Taliban.
That’s what leadership is about.
In Iraq, every major intelligence organization in the world saw a threat. We heard Senators take the floor and implore the rest of the Senate to vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. We heard Hans Blix take the floor of the General Assembly on February 13, 2003 and March 14, 2003 to tell the world that Iraq was not complying with the new wave of weapons inspections, and that millions of previously cataloged weapons had gone missing and were unaccounted for.
The President saw a threat and implored the UN Security Council to act. Instead, France, Russia, and Germany decided they didn’t like the idea, with Chirac saying he would never authorize the use of force, period. We later found out that the countries who made the most money in the oil for food scandal were France, Russia, and Germany. In the midst of all this, the President put together a coalition of 30 nations and took Saddam out. Uday and Qusay are dead. Saddam is in jail.
We may never find chemical weapons in Iraq. But to say that now is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking. The CIA was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. Hans Blix was wrong. Everyone who saw Saddam as a threat was wrong. However, being wrong does not make someone a liar, it makes them wrong, and that’s all there is.
In the end, we have Al Qaeda operatives, Syrian terrorists, Yemeni terrorists, Baathist terrorists, and so on, fighting our soldiers in Iraq. In the streets of Baghdad, and Falloujah. Even at its very worst, and we find not one weapon of mass destruction, where would you rather fight these terrorists? Would you rather set up camp and make a stand while drawing them into Iraq? Or would you rather wait until they attack the US again and then respond forcefully?
Personally, I’d rather our soldiers fought them in Iraq, than our police and firefighters fight them in New York.
Again.
You see, I lived through the 9/11 attacks first hand. I didn’t watch it on television. I didn’t read about it in newspapers. I watched those buildings hit the ground from the roof of my office. I sat in stunned silence on the highway heading to work as I listened to news reporters frantically relaying messages from the NYPD to all officers that there was a total recall and all officers were to return to work immediately.
I watched people heading, hanging out of pickup trucks, to downtown Manhattan to take bodies out of the wreckage, but hoping they would find survivors.
I watched it. And I prayed that day that it would never happen again. I thanked God that we had a leader with the moral clarity to do what was right for this country, and to avenge the death of 3,000 people, some of which I knew. Iraq had to be dealt with. Not by inspectors, who Saddam systematically deceived, but by the end of a gun and the tip of a bomb. Iraq had to be dealt with because the intelligence we had at the time was warning us that if we didn’t deal with it, we’d almost be guaranteeing that Saddam’s weapons would end up in the hands of a terrorist organization and we’d be even worse off than we were on 9/11.
Maybe that doesn’t mean a lot to you if you live in Kansas, or Arizona, or Wyoming, but it means a lot to me because Arab terrorists seem to have a fetish for my hometown, something I wouldn’t expect anyone who hasn’t been through it to understand.
The President took the fight to Iraq so that Iraq wouldn’t become another Afghanistan. He hasn’t flinched. He hasn’t backed off, and he hasn’t changed his mind once the going got tough.
That’s what leadership is about.
You’re probably wondering what I think about the other “pressing” issues of the campaign. Frankly, beyond national security, I don’t think much else really matters much.
Do I think gay marriage matters in terms of the elections? No.
Do I think the government should be giving medical care to everyone and handing out healthcare a la Canada and England? Nope.
Do I think the economy is bad? Frankly, no. By the measure that others use, I’m doing great. I’m making much more money than I was in 2000. My retirement plan is worth double what it was in 2000, and that’s with two years of not participating in it at all. My wife is making almost $15,000 more than she was in 2000. I’m almost out of debt, our wedding is finally paid off, and we’re saving money. Do I owe that to the President? Absolutely not. I owe it to me.
Whenever I hear the question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
The answer is yes.
And I have every confidence that four more years under President Bush will mean that when that question is asked again in 2008, I’ll be able to say yes again.
It is for that reason that I proudly endorse President George W. Bush for a second term in the Oval Office, and on November 2, 2004, he will proudly receive my vote.
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