When dealing with Senate votes, there is indeed a multilayered beast that lurks in the halls and closets of flip-floppers. Voting against the B1 bomber may be because you object to $800 toilet seats buried in the bill; or that the B52 bomber has performed magnificently for half a century. Voting for body armor could entail the omission of explosive-proof steel plates for humvees nor more tanks against the insurgents.
When President, however, there is the luxury of taking on the appearance of decisiveness because he is the boss and answers to no one, particularly when high in the polls. However, for the current occupier of the White House, the resolve is not present:
● Homeland security is but another proposal for big government and more union workers. … On the other hand, as long as the department is union-free, and can prove Dems are unpatriotic for holding out, then he’s for it.
● Though warned that Bin Laden was determined to strike within our borders, the decision was made that vacation and the golf course were more important.
● The 9/11 Commission was at first perceived as “out to get the president” and was, of course, rejected; that is, until articulate 9/11 familes of victims pushed forward.
● The Saddam link to Al Qaeda was a simple equation by the Vice President, not the President who merely believed it was a longshot to keep the juices for war flowing.
● He was loyal to Chalibi, until he decided to raid the defector’s office for espionage.
● He assured the Vice President that it was up to the states to decide on gay marriage but then proposed a federal constitution amendment defining marriage.
● He demanded lower fuel prices from OPEC, but then decided that the free market should be allowed to gouge, keeping Saudi friends happy.
● He agreed with Gore that there should be a lock box on social security but resolutely raided the source in behalf of trillions for tax cuts.
● At the outset of the war in Afghanistan he wanted Bin Laden “dead or alive, now the terrorist is irrelevant.
● When he urged the UN to become relevant and insist on WMD inspections in Iraq, but when the inspectors were making headway, he told them to get out of Iraq because war was inevitable.
● During the 2000 campaign he wanted tax cuts for the low end, as president he reversed that promise.
● He was intent on searching out terrorists throughout the globe but decided they were all in Iraq.
● The resolve to win the war in Iraq terminated on the aircraft carrier.
● He ran as a compassionate conservative president and became an impassioned, wartime commander in chief set out to democratize the globe and ignore his constituency on the basis that one cannot live on bread alone when in fear.
If the President is not a flip-flopping swivel-head, then there is no truth nor justice in the nation.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: September 9, 2004.