On the Election, pt. 1

I figure that between now and November I'll post more than one comment on the election and the players/parties involved so I thought I'd number them and see how many I got. Now that Kerry has picked a running mate, I figure it's open season on everyone and here's my first salvo. Obviously, I have an opinion and a side, but since I don't think this is the place to preach my distorted view of politics, I'll merely ramble on about things that seem interesting that might affect how the populace votes.

My first observation comes from the number of Kerry supporters who are anti-Bush merely because of the whole Iraq situation. I read a report yesterday that a prominent Libertarian is going to vote for Kerry for this reason (after years of not voting for either of the 2 major parties) and this concerns me. Not because this person is going to vote for Kerry, but for why he'll be voting for Kerry.

What do these Kerry supports think Kerry will do once he's in office about the whole Iraq situation? Pull all the troops out and let Iraq fend for itself? This can't be the case and no rational person should expect Kerry to do this, yet I'm sure there are anti-Bush supports out there who think exactly this. Maybe they think Kerry will hand over total control of Iraq to the UN? While this will absolve him of the political responsibility for what goes on there, our troops will have to still be significantly involved because we are the largest troop supplier to the UN and because other nations that currently don't support the action in Iraq will probably continue to do so. Maybe they think Kerry will at least back America out of the governing business in Iraq? Since the governmental handoff last week this will be happening gradually anyways so a change in US leadership won't leave us any better off than we are now. Maybe these supporters merely want to punish Bush and the Republican party for leading them into this fiasco? This seems kind of petty and not politically behavior because in the end we'll still be involved with soldiers at risk in a country where we might not rightfully belong.

I guess the point I'm getting at is that those voters who support Kerry solely to be "anti-Bush's action in Iraq" might be deceiving themselves if they think that a change in US leadership will significantly change our role in Iraq going forward. Yes, a different President might not have gotten us in this situation (and might have left the terrorist unpunished), but now that we've started down this path there's very little movement room to back out gracefully. We have to ride the situation out and it may take more than one or two Presidential terms to do so. Change for changes sake on one political issue is not always the wisest action given the impact that change might have on other political issues that may be important to you as a voter.