Bruce Fisher
Published September 11, 2004
President Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention seemed like a good one until I thought through it. What he didn't tell us was more telling than what he did tell us.
He said the reason we are in Iraq is to bring liberty and democracy to a country controlled by an evil dictator who tortured and murdered his people and attacked his neighbors. What he didn't say was that such a reason would never have secured congressional authority to go to war in the first place.
(snip)
Bush moved on to domestic policy, laying out where he wanted to take the country in his next term. He presented initiatives on job training, education, health care and more. All good ideas. But he didn't mention that those initiatives cost money or say where the money would come from.
We heard that he wants to make American business more competitive through deregulation and tort reform. But he didn't mention that deregulation would make business more abusive and tort reform would make business less accountable. Bush said he wants to systemically reform Social Security and Medicare; not a word on the cost or how he would pay for it. Again he said he wanted to lower taxes by making his tax cuts permanent. But he didn't tell us this would, in conjunction with the cost of his new initiatives and his never-ending war, balloon the federal deficit beyond what our collective imagination can cope with. Nor did he remind us that presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all raised taxes and that through the '90s America had its greatest period of growth and prosperity.
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http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/4975085.htmlBruce Fisher, St. Louis Park, is a food trader.
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