The Stakes are too High ...

The Stakes are too high:

This article has been circulating, but I haven’t been able to find a link to its origin.

Professor Manweller sees this election as the only election in our lifetime that is likely to matter. He sees the potential election of John Kerry as leading to “retreat, abdication, and a reign of ambivalence”.

“The election of John Kerry will serve notice to every terrorist in every cave that the soft underbelly of American power is the timidity of American voters.”

I’m sorry I couldn’t find a more authoritative link. While the article is worth reading, I think I could sketch a decent rebuttal if I were so inclined. (I won’t; I agree with his conclusions about the likely consequences).

It is my belief that our society is in deep trouble. Thomas Friedman, who I always respect though I often don’t agree, has a list of three severe challenges that will face our nation in the fairly near future. Personally I think he vastly underestimates the danger of the third one along with our current possibilities of success (if and only if, IMHO, Bush wins).

Of those three challenges he mentions, only Bush would make progress on the first two and only Bush could make progress on the last one. I don’t believe Bush will make nearly as much progress on any of those three as our society needs. But the institutional pressures which will prevent Bush from moving forward as much as we need to will necessarily cause Kerry to either ignore things or make them worse.

And of course, those things are BIG discussions in their own right. There are some long legitimate discussions we could have on those if anyone wanted too.

-- John