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Politics

Vote for Bush: He's Not Bush

Jesse Walker | 9.3.2004 9:25 AM

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First I thought the high point of the convention was Giuliani's witty address on opening night. Then I thought it was Arnold Schwarzenegger's brilliant koan, "Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air." Then I thought it was Zell Miller's impression of a psychotic rooster, which will surely go down in the history of performance art.

But President Bush gave them a run for their money last night, when he said this:

To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for. He's proposed more than $2 trillion in federal spending so far, and that's a lot, even for a senator from Massachusetts.

Wow. John Kerry is such a Massachusetts liberal, even George Bush, the least thrifty president since Lyndon Johnson, thinks he's a big spender. Now that's a damning attack.

There's all sorts of things you can do with that approach. If things are looking really bad in Baghdad come October, Bush could even jump on the antiwar bandwagon. Imagine the ad:

Four years ago, George W. Bush ran for president promising a "humble" foreign policy. But the Senate ignored his wise warning, and voted to authorize an unnecessary and disastrous war in Iraq. Now America's finest men and women are dying in the desert sands -- and for what?

Among the senators who voted for that war were (cue spooky music) John Edwards and John Kerry.

If anyone calls him on it, Bush could just say the humble foreign policy is part of his second-term agenda. You know, like Social Security reform.

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NEXT: Bloody Shootout Ends Russian School Siege

Jesse Walker is books editor at Reason and the author of Rebels on the Air and The United States of Paranoia.

PoliticsJohn Edwards
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