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Don’t Dis the War Dead
It was November 1968, and I was in my senior year at Loudon High School. My best friend was a guy named Scott Thornburg. Scott had been out of school for the first two days of the week, and I had been too busy to try to get in touch with him. Finally, on Wednesday, he returned to school. I knew we’d see each other at lunchtime and I could ask where he’d been. Scott and I didn’t eat lunch. We took the lunch money that our moms gave us and bought cigarettes. You could smoke at school back then so we spent our lunch break on the balcony over the lunchroom, smoking.
When lunchtime rolled around, we met outside and I asked where he had been. “I’m quitting school,” he said. “What?” I asked.
“Sunday was my birthday. I turned 18,” he said. “I went to take my physical this week and joined the Marines. I’m tired of school and tired of this little town. I want to go places and do things. I’ll be leaving for basic after Thanksgiving.” And that was that. He left after Thanksgiving, just as he said.
Six months later, on May 31, 1969, Delta Co. spotted five NVA moving near Giang La and opened fire. The sweep of the area revealed two VC killed, with weapons. Scott was injured also, and he died later that afternoon of multiple fragmentation wounds. He was 18 and a half years old.
I’m not here to debate whether that war, or any war, is right. But if we lock ourselves within our own borders and refuse to go help any people in foreign lands, we will not only disrespect all those Americans who have died on foreign soil, but we will also have completely given in to terror. We might as well all lock ourselves in our homes and never go out again.
Ralph M Markowicz
Oak Ridge
Invalidity of Voting Records
Years ago the League of Women Voters published voting records of incumbents.
We stopped for exactly the reasons Frank Cagle so beautifully described in his Nov. 4 column, “Voting Records are True Lies.” It is impossible to accurately characterize a vote on a multi-faceted issue.
Mr. Cagle’s explanation of why voting records should be viewed with a great amount of skepticism is one of the best I have ever read. I am saving it to use when I need to explain to someone why the League no longer publishes voting records.
Judy Poulson
President, League of Women Voters of Knoxville
Bush Has His Mandate
The liberal left-leaning leaders and media must hear the message: The polarization of America must cease. In the November elections, more than 58 million Americans voted for President Bush. That 58 million is the largest number of votes ever cast for any president in history. Many on the left will lament to discover that this was about 3 million more than voted for Kerry, about 7 million more than Al Gore got four years ago, and even 4 million more than Reagan received in his 1984 landslide. So how did the Bush campaign pull it off? A lot of voters, that’s how.
Bush won the popular vote with over 50 percent of the voters speaking clearly in his favor. He is the first president to get above a 50 percent majority since 1988. His father (five elections ago) was the last to win a true majority of the popular vote. Liberals should also consider the margin in this election. It was millions, not 500 as in 2000. Some commentators are so stung by the liberal loss, they are scrambling to explain Bush’s victory. Some are grasping at straws to make sense of a reality they couldn’t even imagine a week before the election. Some commentators repine that the Bush campaign super-charged the “moral minority.” That is a monumental understatement. First, they are not a minority. Look at the final vote count. I humbly point out: That was not a minority.
Many deny the reality of the terrorist threat in America and its justified role in this election. Therefore, some downplayed the importance of it. Bush is accused by his critics of “stoking voters’ fears about terror, vesting himself with the cloak of a commander-in-chief at war.” Such a criticism reeks of crying in one’s beer.
It was not Bush but rather 9/11 that stoked our fears. The aftermath generated our respect for this man who was indeed our commander-in-chief, masterfully leading us through a war in spite of liberal denials of the fact. Bush did not wear a cloak but rather a mantle of honor and leadership to free the Muslim world from tyranny and protect our homeland. Justice was taken to the doorsteps of our enemies. The war was taken to Baghdad instead of waiting for it to come to Baltimore. Throughout his administration and the election cycle, Bush stuck to his plan and kept his message simple. Bush led a flawless campaign that paralleled his prosecution of the war on terror and the march of freedom now sweeping across the sands of the Middle East.
I believe Bush seems in good shape to claim a fresh mandate for his war on terror, the military operation in Iraq and domestic initiatives from tax cuts to faith-based governance. Up until the election, liberals cherished what they would call a “near parity between the two parties in Congress for most of the past decade.” That parity evaporated Election Day 2004, when the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate, several more in the House and a majority of the governorships and many state-elected officials throughout the nation. That parity is now called a solid Republican majority. And it is a loud warning to the liberal leadership in America: “Tone down or become as extinct as Tom Daschle.” Along with that, left-wing judiciaries must now see the handwriting on the wall: In the future, moral questions should be answered by the electorate and lawmakers who reflect their constituency rather than answered by judges with an agenda. We can only hope that the judges Bush appoints will tend toward moderation rather than injecting left-wing “moral imperatives” into the Constitution, as some past judges have done.
The Kerry/Democrat plan to divide and conquer failed in its conception and was buried by the vast millions of voters who said they wanted a united America under a true commander-in-chief. The upset of Democrats in races for the Senate left Republicans with five new seats. Add to that, the ouster of the architect of obstructionism in the Senate, Tom Daschle. Those facts herald the message of the people that divisive rhetoric is dead. The fact that the Dakotas would reject their favorite son from remaining a leader in the Senate screams a message that must not be ignored. America must unite and move forward. Having witnessed the will of the majority in this election, liberals must move toward the middle ground, or else they will exacerbate the polarization of America rather than resolve it.
Bush’s success validates the campaign’s political strategy to vanquish political adversaries by winning the support of the opponent’s electorate. As a result, this election should help to resolve the country’s deep cultural and ideological divides—which surfaced vividly at the hands of the partisan obstructionism perpetrated over the past four years in the Senate. With the Democratic leadership in disarray, there is finally a real opportunity to heal the divide and find new common ground. The division gendered by Democratic Gore-mongering over the past four years may be put to rest now in 2004. Exit polls gauging voter sentiment showed that Bush not only continued to enjoy overwhelming support from his conservative base, he also made great progress expanding his reach among voters beyond it. Those 58 million were certainly not just a conservative minority. Rather, they revealed a massive groundswell beyond the base in huge numbers that, heretofore, were silent and/or absent from the polls.
One of the most intriguing things was the way the population united regardless of religious, economic, educational and gender backgrounds under the Bush banner for safety from terrorists, economic prosperity and American freedom. Add to that the way democracy is spreading throughout the world. The numbers don’t lie. Remarkable is the fact that Bush carried a majority of voters without college degrees, the majority with degrees, the majority of women and the majority of blue-collar working men.
Kerry’s support, on the other hand, was centered in a small group of large-populated major industrial cities. These mega-metros were filled with minorities, urban dwellers and the less religious folk, according to the Washington Post’s most recent article on the election.
Among Kerry’s greatest disappointments in 2004 was his campaign’s failure to energize young voters. In spite of free rock concerts, the voter turnout among the 18-29 year old voters remained about 17%. That mirrors their turnout in the 2000 election. As a result, their numbers were not sufficient to make a difference. However, they did enjoy the free concerts and hope for more in 2008.
A pronounced shift came among moderates. In this polarized political climate, their share of the electorate dropped from about 50 percent in 2000 to about 45 percent this year. As a result, the margin for the Democratic nominee decreased, leaving the moderates to migrate to the Bush camp. Political independents also moved to the Bush column. These factors helped produce his win. White voters turned out to cast ballots for President Bush by double-digit margins while blacks backed John Kerry by 10 to 1.
Regular churchgoers were rock-solid behind the Republican incumbent. So were married voters with children and Americans who own guns. Those who care most about the threat of terrorism and issues related to moral values voted overwhelmingly to give the 43rd president a second term. But in a stark display of what separates the nation’s political camps, voters who say they never attend church services sided just as strongly with the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. So did gay voters, single voters, union members.
The Bush plan was appealing to America, against a backdrop of a growing economy, low interest rates, low inflation and millions of new jobs created in a market with the housing industry growing and more minorities owning more homes this year than in any other year in history. Bush stuck to his original campaign plan from the beginning to the end. Also, the successful prosecution of the war on terror and the progress in the war in Iraq helped bolster popularity for Bush’s approach to foreign policy. The issues of terrorism and moral values by Bush were effective appeals to both Democrats and swing voters.
This campaign was a strategy that fit the man with resolve who believes in absolutes, trusts the wisdom of brilliant advisers and is consistently strong in his core values and faith in God. In the end, it came down to a choice between fear and anger. The majority of Americans feared what Kerry might do or not do and were angry that his plans and goals changed with every wind blown from the pollsters. Also, throughout his campaign, Kerry traded on fear by threatening job losses and predicting Social Security checks to be in danger. Sen. John Kerry also traded on anger, using the cultural and religious divisions raging in America. He offered hope to the non-religious and amoral folks of society and enraged them against the values of the right. The right, by the way, is called the “Right” for a reason.
So then, what might a real mandate look like for Mr. Bush? Will he pursue his course undaunted, whatever the opposition may do? The majority in America hopes so. As for the political left? Both domestically and in their foreign policy, it is time for liberals to prove themselves “uniters, not dividers.” They may do this by coming back to the spirit of moderation and stop arguing arrogantly. Liberals should admit mistakes and change their course, now that change is warranted. We are about to find out what Democrats are really made of and if they truly want America to go forward to unite.
Bush’s apparent insurmountable lead in the popular vote vindicated his policies, his persistence, his personal qualities and his political strategy. He bet that voters who had shared a traumatic terrorist attack and two wars on his watch would stand by him, and it seems obvious that they did.
Clifton Fox
Reagan, Tenn.
November 18, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 47
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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