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Skriven 2004-09-29 11:33:48 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Yet another America hater
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Another View:
Why I will vote for John Kerry for President
By JOHN EISENHOWER
Guest Commentary
Telephone Credit Union

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of
extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will
determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has
followed for the last 3½ years or whether it will return to a set of core
domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has
made this country great.

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments,
unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as
our parents did or as we “always have.ö We remained loyal to party labels.
We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when
we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically
expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election
of 2000, I was. With the current administration’s decision to invade Iraq
unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and
barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the
Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today’s “Republicanö Party is one with which I am totally
unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republicanö has always been synonymous with
the word “responsibility,ö which has meant limiting our governmental
obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s
whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant
respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the
community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick
separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership
involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other
countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments
indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused
confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled
world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to
free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the
action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the
United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush
stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying
an entire nation.

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual
freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight
terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder.
In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, “If ever we
put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose
both.ö I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party
of today.

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal
responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of
the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished
that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did
not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich.
Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a
necessary means of keep the nation’s financial structure sound.

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small
business. Today’s Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for
the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in
the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that
he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers
associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will
vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this
country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone,
Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely
because it carries the label of the party of one’s parents or of our own
ingrained habits.

John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White
House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower
administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing “The
White House Years,ö his Presidential memoirs. He served as American
ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine
books, largely on military subjects.
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