Will the candidates ever cease their petty brawls and get serious?

9/25/2004

WILL somebody please tell George and John that now's the time to campaign for president of the United States?

Will somebody tell them to quit their schoolyard brawl and begin talking to voters?

The public has just about had it with the squabbling about the National Guard and swift boats.

And hey, I won't even mention Mr. Bush and the Guard documents and the TV news program whose first letter is C and whose last letter is S.

We're five weeks from Election Day and Sen. John Kerry has not drummed into the public his position on many of the issues that President Bush has already failed on: the economy, a national health care program, a prescription drug program, school improvement, how to compel states to improve funding to higher education so that more students can go to college (Hello, Governor Taft and Ohio General Assembly!), how to keep Social Security solvent, how to improve living standards for the poor, how to stem the flow of jobs overseas and bring back those that are there now, how to ensure that voters' ballots are protected and counted, how to protect the environment, and how to improve day care so mothers who want to or need to can take their children to a safe place while they work.

Oh. Gotta give it to the Bushter for giving the middle class a tax cut, right in the nick of time before the election, wouldn't you know! The campaign ploy will add to the national debt and compound the burden of responsibility for future generations.

Meanwhile, both candidates talk endlessly about terrorism and the war in Iraq.

Mr. Kerry? Now there's a man with a plan for Iraq, a get-get-get-get plan: get help from other nations, get better training for its security forces, get benefits to Iraqis, and get those democratic elections under way right away.

And what did Mr. Bush say? That Mr. Kerry is too busy changing his mind on the issue, flip-flopping as it were.

"He apparently woke up this morning and has now decided, no, we should not have invaded Iraq," the President said.

To which Mr. Kerry responded: "How can he possibly be serious? Is he really saying to America that if we knew there were no imminent threat, no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaeda, the United States should have invaded Iraq?"

Hey guys! Yoo-hoo!

Talk to us out here in the hinterlands, why don't you? We're the ones who will vote for one or neither of you in November.

By the way, since I mention it, how will our votes be protected? What do you have to say about making sure voters are not intimidated when they go to the polls on Nov. 2?

Nothing to say about that? Just as I thought.

Now, returning to Iraq, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the war "illegal."

But hey, the President could care less. He told the United Nations the other day that he's digging in his heels on Iraq, that he's not backing down from nobody, you hear?

So let's suppose he loses the election. Then it will be tough for Mr. Kerry to convince other nations to support the United States in Iraq.

Swiss President Joseph Deiss' remarks to the U.N. assembly makes the Iraq issue seem hopeless: "In hindsight, experience shows that actions taken without a mandate which has been clearly defined in a Security Council resolution are doomed to failure."

Well, at least both candidates have lately made feeble attempts to appeal to women. What they forget is that what matters to women is pretty much what matters to men. Duh!

Now's the time for those guys to quit ghetto-izing various segments of the population and talk straight up about what's important for our futures.

And will somebody tell George Bush to quit surrounding himself with cute little black children for photo ops?

Then, he and Senator Kerry can discuss their plans to stop hurricanes from blasting the nation's southern and eastern states.