Image vs. substance

When the Clinton campagn found traction attacking President Bush’s “no new taxes” broken pledge in the 1992 Presidential campaign, they decided that they’d better promise a middleclass tax cut. After that pledge won them the election, the Clinton team turned around and levied the largest tax increase in history on the middleclass. They even made their tax increase retroactive so that people who’d died in the first half of the year had their taxes raised.

Retirees saw their meager social security benefits dwindle as the taxable amount went from 50% to 85% – despite the fact that they’d paid income taxes on their social security contributions when it was earned. Married couples saw their taxable income increase 25% as Democrats searched for ways to tax single income families.

Six years went by with no tax relief for the middleclass. Finally, in 1998, the Clintons gave a $500 per child tax credit. That works out to a whopping $75/year per child per year in the then-lowest tax bracket (15%). So that was it for the Clinton era middleclass tax cuts.

Now President Bush promised tax cuts in the 2000 campaign, and he got them passed in 2001 – tax cuts that put real money in people’s pockets. People in the lowest bracket got their taxes cut at least 33% when their taxes were slashed from 15% to 10%. Some saw their income taxes disappear completely. Married couples got their taxable incomes decreased 25% over five years.

Pretax contributions to retirement plans were tripled and quadrupled to amounts that would actually allow people to save enough money for their retirement. IRA contributions will be $6000/year next year. 401k contributions are 20% of annual income plus an over-50 catch up for workers who weren’t able to contribute while they were raising their kids. That’s substance.

When we were attacked in 1993 by al Qaida, the Clinton crew counter-attacked with lawyers. They approached a war situation with legal solutions – punishing the direct participants but ignoring the base of operations of these animals. As al Qaida attacked US property outside of the US, they used the FBI and CIA to investigate instead of using the USMC to eradicate the threat. Aside from a few missile launches into an asprin factory and some empty tents in Afghanistan, direct military action was avoided. All image, no substance.

In the 2000 and 2004 election campaigns, we heard so much about  the Democrat candidates having to “reinvent” their campaigns. Al Gore had become more animated and he had to wear brown suits instead of the dark blue to attract voters. John Kerry had to be less “intellectual” (how that was even possible I’ll never know) and more nuanced. Democrats had to hire image consultants while George W. Bush just had to be himself – a guy who is straight-forward and does what he says he’ll do. George Bush hasn’t changed a whit since he was governor of Texas. WHy shoould he? He’s a leader, not a poll follower.

Democrats had to change their message, while George Bush never budged from what he believed. Even in the recent immigration debate, we all knew it was coming, the President said it was coming. Whether you liked the immigration reform or not, Bush said that was what he believed and we knew what he believed from the get-go. Whe the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, we all knew what George Bush’s response would be. Even Gaddafi knew – he voluntarily surrendered his weapons of mass destruction before he was next on the list.

In this campaign, we get watch the spectacle of Democrats trying to get to each others’ Left. They reinvent themselves depending on the audience. Code Pink has put pressure on Hillary to go against our national security – and there [s]he goes off to the Left. John Edwards is trying to use the internet to energize his flailing and faultering campaign, since the internet is jam-packed with Leftist anti-war-at-any-cost whackos and he up-and-announces that the war is just a bumpersticker slogan. To the thunderous applause of the anti-war-at-any-cost crowd.

Democrats promised to end the war in the last election, ignoring that it’s just not feasible to jerk our troops out of Iraq in the middle of a battle. The anti-war-at-any-cost crowd jumped up and down with glee, until they discovered that Democrats couldn’t end the war. They get giddy every time Democrats make intellectually vacant statements about ending the war, when Harry Reid drags out the cots for an “all-night debate”, when John Murtha calls our troops cold-blooded murderers, when Dick Durbin calls for the closing of Guantanamo.

The Democrats are even discussing the possibilty of a debate over “gay rights” (whatever gay rights mean) as if any of them are going to stand up and condemn the idea that any candidate might support special rights for people based on their activities in their bedrooms. What will Democrats debate about gays? Everyone knows that anything deviant is fine with Democrats – while folks who believe in God and His Word should be beheaded in public.

But it’s all theater. It’s meaningless – but Democrats love the theater. They don’t care about substance – just so long as they can feel good about themselves and their vote. Their useless, pointless and meaningless vote.

Give me a candidate who means what he says, a candidate with whom I don’t necessarily agree 100% of the time, but someone I know will act in the best interest of the country in every situation – without regard for political fallout. I don’t care what color his/her suit is or how much hair he/she has – or what color his/her hair is. I don’t care if he/she is able to discuss the issues involved in our policy with some unknown tyrannt in some dark corner of the Third World, just so long as I know what he/she’d do if that tyrannt decided to kill or imprison some US citizens in their country.

My ideal candidate would present an image based on substance – not an image based on more images. Given the history of recent candidates of the Democrat Party, I don’t think they’ll meet my litmus test. Lord knows, most of the Republican candidates don’t meet the criteria, either.

Category: Historical, John Murtha, Politics, Society