politics and bipartisanship

what the hell is wrong with american politics these days?

we can't adopt the attitude of:
"politics are stupid. we're fucked no matter what we do. let's just have fun while we can before we die. we're all gonna die someday. why bother to spend the short time you have pissed off at stupid people for stupid reasons?"

it's easy since most of us don't worry about our mother and fathers being out of work tommorow, there is a large percentage of people in america who think we who vote should most definately give a fuck about politics.

i was reading the news article Melisa posted on CuCommunity about the Bush campaign's choosing to use the moveon.org video comparing bush and hitler. it was actually quite an amusing video if you want to goto the page and watch it. it's @ http://www.georgewbush.com on the front page. after a little chuckle about the lack of substance in the video, i looked at the rest of the G W Bush site. let's look:





all you see are reasons why John Kerry sucks and you shouldn't vote for him. have we gotten to such a point in american politics where the only refuge that the incumbent has is to mud sling all over his main campaign page? sure there are sections on his page devoted to his stances on the issues, but the front page reflects what the campaign wants you to focus on. the GOP doesn't want you to look at bush and the things he has done for the nation, it wants you to look at kerry.

switch to kerry's main site:



observe, unless you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you don't see anything about bush. the quip about bush at the bottom is not in regards to bush's character, but his stance on china relations.

it is this kind of unequal plane of fighting political battles that makes me shake my head. i believe, ideally, we would be talking about issues, we have bipartisanship set up because these beliefs in what is best for the social and economic benefit of the entire country are different. there is nothing wrong with different opinions. the bush campaign isn't talking about 1. reasons why we should vote for him; 2. what america needs; and 3. how he plans to improve on the past 4 years.
instead what do we have?

we don't have why you should vote for bush, the main slogan of the bush campaign is, why you shouldn't vote for John Kerry. every commercial i see on TV is, "pessimism never created a job" or "this is not a time for pessimism or rage".
not to say that the Kerry campaign doesn't have some videos directed at bush, at least they have campaign videos that say, "hey america, these are the problems i think america is facing right now and this is how i propose to fix it". this is at least a plan of some sort, it is completely ridiculous to say, vote for me because that other guy sucks. you know, if bush wants to say kerry sucks, maybe a bunch of people will leave the bush camp and go vote for nader...

the other thing that really bothers me about the bush ad campaign is, well it stems from what i was just talking about, the negative focus on kerry's character and not issues. i found politics to be very entertaining and intriguing to watch because it was like a gladiator match, one camp's best warrior versus the best the other camp had to offer. these were heroes that nations could take pride in and root for. there was a mutual respect that these were both great men or women. where is that in american politics, any politics for that matter? are we trying to degrade and push candidates so far into the ground that voters have to scratch their head and think, the person who may lead our country isn't fit for the job. isn't that what we are saying through this negative campaigning, that the other candidate sucks and can't do the job? it's kind of depressing to think that we hold political conventions of long periods of time to find the best person to champion the helm of a party's ship only to discover one or both of them are losers and unfit for the job. nothing is about issues, it has everything to do with how well you can kick the other person in the balls. (e.g. bush vs. mccain, gingrich vs. clinton on sex scandal [since newt was having an affair of the same nature at the same time, great.] .

keep it to the issues, not the bullshit.

P.S. hilarious parody of the bush campaign site.

http://www.georgewbush.org/index.asp