14 October 2004

When It's Time to Choose

… I really won't have a good handle on how GWB would defend the performance of his Attorney General, as no question on the matter was asked. Nor, for that matter, on inordinate influence of unelected, unconfirmed advisors (such as the White House Chief of Staff) on governance. Overall, both candidates were less than great, although GWB was markedly improved from the first debate. The moderator did a pretty good job. The people who wrote the questions, though, brought shame and disgrace upon American journalism for administrations to come.

In any event, choose a candidate. And vote. If nothing else, that will demonstrate (at least as to you) whether your registration is valid. Whether the referenced story is true or not, the real danger is that it has the ring of truth; and that, faithful reader, is a far more damning indictment of politics-as-it-has-come-to-be-practiced in the US than was even Bush v. Gore. The decision in Bush v. Gore was probably not correct, but was at least defensible… because the most-relevant data never made it into the record, primarily because the Florida Secretary of State alleged that neither she nor her subordinates had the data. Having been inside the Beltway myself, I believe that that was probably true; the problem is that the records should have existed, even if they did not.