thehowe_v7.1

The last presidential debate is on tonight. To be honest, I don't want to vote for Bush or Kerry. I don't like either of them, and I'm sick of their skirting around the issues. Both are constantly bringing up "my opponent's record", and how "it speaks for itself". Both are constantly twisting statistics and figures to support their cause. They are both politicians, and I don't trust either of them.

That being said, I decided to use my time constructively tonight, and instead of watching two monkeys hoot at each other I muted the debate and looked up their respective websites. After looking at the policies they outline, here's how I'm scoring them:

• Education: Kerry wins. When I look at his page on education, I see an emphasis laid on improving standardized tests to cover the skills kids need and providing more funding to our schools. When I look at Bush's plan for education, I see an emphasis laid on more standardized tests and pre-school/adult education. Today's standardized tests are worthless, and we need to focus on better education for everyone.
• Jobs: Tie. Both candidates are saying pretty much the same thing - helping the common worker and tax reform.
• Science & Tech: Bush wins. Key elements that swayed me: Bush supports Nuclear Power, increased R&D funding, and has detailed info on how he plans to support alternative energy research and implementation. Kerry does support stem cell, which I approve of. However, he never mentions Nuclear power, his plans on supporting R&D are vague, and the alternative energies he mentions are only more of the same old thing: coal, oil, and gas.
• Environment: Kerry wins. The deciding factor was their policies on the Great Lakes. Bush has a paragraph. Kerry has a whole page.
• Character: Bush wins, in possibly the most important category. I stated in a previous post that I liked Bush better than Kerry, and I stick by that opinion. Here's an example of why: the war. I don't think that we the reasons Bush gave us for going to war were good enough to justify the act of going to war. I believed the same thing when he first announced it. However, it wasn't my call, and I don't (didn't) have access to the information that Bush had at the time. What I do know is that Bush believes he did the right thing. He strongly believes he did the right thing. I respect that. As for Kerry, who really knows what he believes? Whenever he talks about the war he delivers classic politically appeasing statements in an even, unemotional tone. I just don't like the guy. He's too much of a politician.

Edit: Kerry just criticized Bush for not meeting with enough minority advocate groups, citing it as evidence that Bush doesn't support Affirmative Action. Well, I guess that's one more point for Bush. Affirmative Action is such bull-shit. "We need to give minorities special consideration and privilege in order to make them feel equal." After all, if they're not treated like they're different, then we'd all just be Americans. Oh, wait.

So who wins? Not the American people, that's for damn sure. Both have good points and bad points to their proposed programs, and both have bad points to their character. I still haven't decided who I hate less.