Loyal readers (here, I can't even say "hi ma!") will recall that A Penny's Worth predicted victory for John Kerry, but stopped short of endorsing his campaign.

APW announces today that we hereby officially endorse Anybody But Bush (ABB) for the office of president of the United States in 2004.

We would have liked to endorse an actual candidate, but after careful analysis, we have concluded that we think America would be best served by four years of ABB in the oval office. (This analysis did not include reviewing either candidate's plans for office, because we are concerned with what a president might actually DO if elected, not with the creative writing abilities of his staffers, and plans and platforms are far poorer predictors of future behavior than past behavior is.)

Kerry's campaign, I think by any objective measure, has bungled the Swift Boat attack; the man won 3 purple hearts and a silver star in Viet Nam, and yet he is losing the "What did you do in the war?" issue to a couple of draft dodgers. At some point that becomes his fault (although reportedly he wanted to respond, and his staff talked him ot of it.)

Second, Kerry exhibits an overall apparent lack of desire to differentiate himself substantially from Bush ("Hey! Wait! I'm for the war too, and even though I'm a Massachusetts liberal I'm against gay marriage! Hell, I'm even a Bonesman!") For these two reasons, Kerry has thus far failed to instill much confidence in me. Indeed the best thing he did in his acceptance speech was tar Bush as listening to Arab oil shieks. But then all that really tells us is that one of his speech writers must have seen F9/11 ( Kerry claims he has not and won't. OK, he would deserve credit for that, but then Bush hasn't seen it either.)

But I remain resolute that by virtue of the grotesque mishandling of foreign policy in the wake of 9/11 (and the general ignoring of it befrore), this administration has to go. Sorry, screwed up too badly, can we welcome the next contestant please? Their understanding of the Arab and Muslim world is frighteningly non-existent, and (worse) molded by their Saudi kissing cousins. Foreign policy-- especially in the middle east, especially in a post-9/11 world-- is far too important to have bungled this badly. Bush doesn't know who the enemy is or what to do to improve our lot; the war on Iraq (and of COURSE we are occupiers!) was ill advised, whatever reason they finally zero in on as having been the actual motivation (WMD, oust Hussein, terrorist magnet, model for Islamic democracy, whichever one manages to stick to the wall.) The war was not remotely on strategy, and it will linger and fester, draining American military and financial resources, to the ultimate advantage of our enemies, who were thrilled when Russia made the same mistake in Afghanistan in the early 80s.

Will Kerry do beter? Don't ask me. I'm an ABB man. All I can say is, he couldn't do worse. In short, I've decided that on November 2, and this is a nod to a satirical piece in The Onion, the guy I'll be voting against is Bush.

Labels: The politics