With the negative presidential ad campaign bombarding American televisions, it’s clear the election year is bound for yet another round of candidates evading the issues.
The climax of the ad spree is the Bush administration’s incessant allegation that Sen. John Kerry is “flip-flopping” on the issues. At a recent Westminster College speech, Vice President Dick Cheney outlined these points by, naturally, taking Kerry’s statements completely out of context.
But, oh my, a quick glance at Cheney’s voting record doesn’t exactly do him justice. For instance, did you know Cheney voted against the Head Start program while he was a congressman in 1988, but during the 2000 election went on record pledging his support for the program, according to http://www.issues2000.org?
And, what’s this? In an Aug. 30, 2000 speech to the Southern Center for International Relations in Atlanta, Cheney stressed the importance of President George W. Bush renewing trust between the military and the Bush administration. But in 2002, Bush pushed to deny health benefits for 164,000 veterans, according to the Washington Post.
In the Westminster speech, Cheney criticized Kerry for voting to end certain weapons programs in the U.S. military during Kerry’s 20-year Senate career. But Cheney, in a 1993 budget proposal he made as Secretary of Defense to George H. W. Bush, sought to terminate certain programs, including the Midgetman missile program and advanced cruise missile program. In fact, Cheney’s plan was to cut $50 billion from defense from 1993-1998.
But wait! Cheney recently told Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume that “what we’re concerned about, what I’m concerned about, is (Kerry’s) record in the United States Senate, where he clearly has over the years adopted a series of positions that indicate a desire to cut the defense budget, to cut the intelligence budget, to eliminate many major weapons programs.”
Also, let’s not forget that some of the very weapons systems Cheney sought to disarm in 1993 appear on the Republican National Committee’s list of weapons they argue Kerry was wrong in trying to cut, according to http://www.fair.org.
The paramount example that critics say proves Kerry’s tendency to “flip-flop,” however, stems from Kerry’s proclamation that he “actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Kerry is referring to a bill to dedicate $87 billion to the Afghanistan and Iraq military efforts.
But it seems those critics are leaving out a vital part of that statement: The context. According to The Washington Post, Kerry said in the same speech that he would support the $87 billion if Bush’s tax cuts were dropped. Since they were not dropped, however, Kerry later chose to oppose the bill.
A kind of fuzzy logic can be found in the Republican Party’s charges that Kerry is on a crusade against the military. Republicans accuse Kerry of voting against weapons systems as though he cast several individual votes against each individual system. But in reality the weapons systems motions were all part of one big Pentagon appropriations bill in 1991, which Kerry opposed, according to www.fair.org. So, Kerry’s alleged 20-year mission to topple the U.S. military and render the country defenseless against the evils of the world was actually just one vote.
Speaking of opposing defense measures, Bush resisted the creation of a department dedicated to American security before the Department of Homeland Security was established, according to The Washington Post. So, in theory, the newest Kerry anti-Bush ad could feature Bush saying, “I actually opposed the Department of Homeland Security — before I supported it!”
The moral of this murky story is that very few politicians in this country have completely noble motivations. Politics being as they are, oftentimes a legislator or public servant will support something at one point and then oppose it later for political reasons, or vice versa. Cheney did it with education and defense. Kerry did it with defense and undoubtedly many other things. Focusing an entire campaign on these factors is ridiculous, deceptive and a perfect example of why the American people are so sick and tired of caring at all.