Bush has himself to blame for the election fix he's in

The so-called dean of American journalism, the Washington Post’s David Broder, lays out his case for why Bush ought to lose the election, and it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with swift boat veterans and Kerry’s service in Vietnam. From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle:

Long after Saddam was defeated and captured, American forces have found no evidence of the supposed stockpiles. The rationale for a war that has taken nearly 1,000 American lives, caused several thousand American casualties and cost well over $100 billion does not exist.

Linked to the decision to go to war was the decision not to do what every other wartime American president has done -- raise taxes to pay for the costs. Instead, in the face of growing annual deficits, Bush pressed a compliant Republican Congress for more and bigger tax cuts. In 2003, when he asked Congress for $87 billion for Iraq, Bush said, "I heard somebody say, 'Well, what we need to do is have a tax increase to pay for this.' That's an absurd notion. You don't raise taxes when an economy is recovering. Matter of fact, lower taxes will help enhance economic recovery. We want our people going back to work."

Despite the triple dose of stimulus -- tax cuts on top of historically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve Board on top of a huge increase in federal defense and domestic spending -- the recovery from a not-very-severe recession during the first year of Bush's term has been weak, especially given his No. 1 goal of producing jobs.

Click here for the rest.

Of course, Kerry’s got to fight hard to make this point, especially because the rest of the press seems to be caught up in the Republican slime attack over whether he was a good soldier or not, which is completely ironic given that Bush used his family connections to avoid combat duty altogether. Really, it’s a no-brainer that Bush should lose: his failed conservative policies aren’t just destroying the lives of ordinary Americans; they’re destroying the economy, and that means countless business are being screwed, too. Why, oh, why does the press drone on and on about swift boats?

Thanks to Eschaton and This Modern World for inspiring this rant.

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