Josh Dover
Contributing Writer
In the modern age of political elections it seems almost fruitless to compare presidential candidates without taking into account the men and women who will be doing the grunt work behind the scenes and setting policy for the administration. In this vein, I believe many people have overlooked what a John Kerry cabinet could bring to the table and have not realistically evaluated many of the miscues and missteps the Bush cabinet has made over the past four years.
After the 2000 election, many conservatives tried to quell my sense of worry about the newly elected president by explaining to me that the president’s obvious shortcomings would be overcome by the presence of skilled and passionate leaders who would direct the behind-the-scenes aspects of the administration. This glimmer of hope acted as the proverbial spoonful of sugar that would help my aversion for the new administration go down.
However, four years later it seems as if my spoonful of sugar has been replaced by salt, and the one saving grace of this administration has fallen short. Many people, myself included, were hopeful about the prospects of National Security Adviser Dr. Condolezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell, yet both have fallen short of these high expectations. Powell’s expedition to the United Nations to show evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which would, in turn, show cause for military force, was met with the subsequent admission of faulty intelligence. I truly believe that Powell thought he was doing the right thing, but he, along with many others, allowed faulty intelligence to be taken as gospel. When Rice has shown signs of questioning the Bush administration’s policy, she has received the political equivalent of being “sent to her room,” and little has been heard from her in the last several months.
Liberals are quick to blame President Bush for the flare-up of anti-American sentiment that has been seen overseas, or the miscalculations in the war in Iraq. However, one can not be so hasty in these assumptions. It would be naive to believe that any president wakes up one morning and says “I want to invade a sovereign nation today.”
Let’s be honest, it wasn’t Bush’s idea, and if anyone is to blame for the squandered goodwill from abroad after Sept. 11, 2001, or the failures to understand the complexity of a war in Iraq, it falls in the hands of Bush’s chief policy makers Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz or Andrew Card. They are responsible for allowing the faulty intelligence to be taken as truth and the subsequent policy decisions that were based off of it.
Realizing that it isn’t the president alone who dreams up policy and strategy decisions on a whim, but relies on his cabinet and other close advisers to develop major policy applications, one needs to look at the possible people Kerry would surround himself with. All of whom would have superior credentials and are widely respected across partisan lines. One could imagine a cabinet with the likes of former Gen. Anthony Zinni, former NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark, former Clinton economics adviser Laura D’Andrea-Tyson, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke or New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Despite many conservatives’ biggest fears, the cabinet would not be filled with the likes of Sen. Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean or Michael Moore.
An administration’s effectiveness in handling the issues at home and abroad relies on more than just the president; any comprehensive evaluation of which administration would better handle the needs of our country must look deeper than who occupies the chair in the Oval Office. The prospective policy makers and political advisers need to be taken into account when people choose a candidate — any lesser assessment would be incomplete.
Consequently, when voters head off to the polls this fall, they must realize that they are voting for more then just a candidate. Each vote will affect years of domestic and foreign policy. Before voters make their decisions they must scrutinize the current administration’s strategy consultants and remember the missteps and miscues that have occurred over the past four years. Then, just maybe, they will realize that the picture isn’t quite as rosy as the president would lead us to believe.
09-30-2004