he economy is strong and becoming stronger...the President has assured us we've turned the corner.
At his campaign stops in the heartland of the country the chief executive tells us that four years from now "the economy will be better." Mr. President, the U.S. poverty rate and the number of Americans without health insurance rose last year for the third consecutive year. Under this president's leadership American families are falling further behind. Wouldn't it be appropriate and enlightening if this campaign produced debate over the country's economic health? Isn't it time we turned attention from the shallow, bitter, dirty campaign ploy of attacking Sen. Kerry's Vietnam War record, toward the economic issues and if the subject is war, rather concentrate on what Mr. Bush has got us into in Iraq and might well have us fighting during the next four years, should he be re-elected?
The Kerry campaign has made a proposal that calls on Mr. Bush to debate the senator "once a week between now and the end of the campaign, so that the issues that really matter to the American people - like the number of uninsured people living in poverty - can be front and center in this election." Nice try, but it won't happen. An incumbent who is considered to have more to lose than to gain by giving the challenger that exposure will hardly want his opponent to be able to plumb his shallows.
For now they are expected to have three debates starting with the first on September 30th.
One of my guests on KNX radio this coming week is the co-author of the book "The Two-Income Trap; why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke." As she has written, "This year, more people will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack. More adults will file for bankruptcy than will be diagnosed for cancer. More people will file for bankruptcy than will graduate college. And, in an era when traditionalists decry the demise of the institution of marriage, Americans will file more petitions for bankruptcy than for divorce." Thank you professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School.
The Republicans are about to start their convention in New York and I have a feeling that they will discover that several of the most prominent of Wall Streets financiers have become most uncomfortable with the president's agenda and vision.
If only there was a way to get the media to help in the struggle to bring the issues...the real issues...to the electorate.And as to the Convention, I would really like to hear the President's assessment of what has been accomplished by his team over the past four years. I should like to be able to compare the outcome with the promise, the performance with the campaign rhetoric. And maybe he'll give us a blueprint of expectations between now and 2008.