Presidential perspectives; Or, oops, I was wrong

FRANK MIELE

For me, this year's presidential election is quite a bit different than the one in 2004. That time I had a clear candidate - someone who I thought offered hope for the future, would be tough on terrorism, and put principles ahead of politics.

In 2008, of course, George Bush is not running for president, but it may come as a surprise to some of you that the candidate I supported in 2004 wasn't George Bush at all - and it wasn't even a Republican.

What a difference four years makes.

Today, I am known as a knuckle-dragging conservative, someone with the audacity to hope for secure borders, jobs for Americans, protection against mass-murdering hooligans, less money wasted on government handouts, more common sense in the media, a return to civility in our common discourse, and a return to morality in our common understanding.

But four years ago, I was looking for a candidate who could replace George Bush. I had learned to like the president well enough after Sept. 11, 2001, when he seemed to be able to bring the nation together in a moment of crisis. But that was three long years before the 2004 election. In the meantime, we had not just invaded Afghanistan to look for bin Laden, but had invaded Iraq to look for democracy. And as everyone knows, we had seen slight sign of either. As a result, our own nation was clearly fracturing into "red" and "blue," and it appeared that President Bush did not have the political skills to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.

That's why I started looking for an alternative to guide the ship of state, and since no Republicans were challenging the president, I was left to look among the Democrats for a suitable replacement.

Don't get me wrong. I supported President Bush in principle, but found him to be a terribly flawed leader who had mishandled NOT the war in Iraq or the war against al-Qaida, but the war against lethargy.

Lethargy is the tendency toward apathy, or toward laziness if you will, that can silence passions and cause a person or a nation to "lose the name of action." I was worried by the forgetfulness which I had seen follow quickly on the heels of the righteous outrage after 9/11 and did not think that President Bush, despite his good ideas, had the stamina or the intestinal fortitude to take the fight to the American public. He seemed to be content to remain in the White House and was not willing to take his agenda to the public, to sell his ideas and use the "bully pulpit" to bring the nation together in common purpose.

What every good leader knows is that a good idea is worth about as much as the winning entry in the "Tell us how you would improve the world in 25 words or less" contest. Without the ability and will to put even the simplest plan into action, it remains forever a good idea, and never becomes a good thing. President Bush has had many good ideas, but he has accomplished very few good things.

So in 2003, I started following the career of a still little-known senator from North Carolina, and decided he might have the charisma and sincerity to sway the American people to do what we needed to do to conquer challenges both home and abroad. John Edwards seemed to have a sincere appreciation of the importance of the war on terror, yet promised to wage it more effectively than President Bush. He also had an apparent concern for the plight of the working man and woman, although he himself was a millionaire. Although it would be easy to see Edwards as an ambitious potential demagogue, I instead took him at face value and envisioned him as someone who just might inspire a better society while at the same time protecting us from our enemies.

As I have said before - that was then, this is now. The current version of John Edwards is a disaster waiting to happen, but fortunately the early voters have decided he will have a long time to wait.

Of course, it didn't take me until this 2008 campaign to realize that Edwards was weak on defense and strong on spending other people's money. In fact, it all became quite clear as soon as he was selected as John Kerry's running mate in the 2004 election. Edwards quickly changed all of his spots for political convenience, thus unintentionally revealing his true nature as a political opportunist.

Oh well, you can rank that as my second greatest election-year mistake. The first? Voting for the worst candidate in the 2000 presidential election - but not my good buddy George Bush. I refer, of course, to Mr. Doom and Gloom himself, Al Gore.

And now you know the rest of the story.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com.