WEEKLY COLUMN:
JDM vs the WORLD

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FINE PRINT

Well, Election Day is finally here, and this undecided voter has made up his mind. I’ve decided to vote. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

Now, why would I do this? Don’t I know better? Well, yes, of course. I know that, by voting, I’m only giving permission for someone to abuse me. And if there were a way around this, I would take it. But there isn’t. So I won’t.

George Bush and John Kerry are running for president this year. Like it or not, one of them will win. And like it or not, we will undoubtedly be abused. So the way I figure, it’s time to stop worrying and love the bomb. Call it peer pressure. Blame the Boss. Blame P. Diddy. Blame me for caving in. Whatever. I’m tired of ducking the “lesser of two evils” question. The lesser of two evils is still, in fact, evil. We lose no matter what. But no matter who wins, we must live with him for four years. And so, while it pains me to say this, I am voting for George Bush.

I’m afraid John Kerry gives me no choice.

Now, let me be clear here: Bush has been awful. I don’t know if he’s the worst president ever, as some on the Left claim. Lincoln has him beat by a civil war or two. And for all the talk of stacked courts, he hasn’t exactly pulled an FDR. Yet. But he has no respect for the Bill of Rights whatsoever. And the more he talks about freedom, the more freedom seems to mysteriously disappear. So in short, I think he stinks. And if given another four years, I suspect he may earn that worst-ever title.

But as much as Bush has come to personify all I dislike in a leader, Kerry embodies all I dislike in a candidate. I don’t necessarily think he’d do worse as president. He might. He might not. Lord knows he’d have one hell of a hill to climb. But I’m not voting based on leadership here. If I was going to vote for someone I wanted in office, I would vote for the Libertarian Party’s Michael Badnarik. That’s a vote I could live with. After all, the only other offices I’ll be voting for this year are the ones with LP choices; all the rest I intend to leave blank. But in a presidential election this close, between two guys who stink this much, I’m compelled to vote for the one I find slightly less annoying. That’s Bush.

Two reasons why:

First, something purely superficial. I know it goes against conventional wisdom, but I have no problem voting for style over substance—or for a lack of style over an abundance of it. As boring as Bush has become, and as much as he sounds like a broken record, I would rather hear him stumble over monosyllabic sentences and talk about freedom-haters than hear Kerry “do nuance” from now until January 2009. One of these guys is going to be on my TV every day, and for me that’s the most important issue in the “most important election” of my lifetime. I find John Kerry irritating. And while I won’t claim to be voting my conscience, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I sat back and welcomed this butt-head into office.

Secondly, I find it annoying how the choice between Bush and Kerry isn’t much of a choice at all. Some people say they’re two sides of the same coin, but I believe they’re one side of one coin, and if anyone ought to be held responsible for this it’s Kerry—Bush was here first, after all.

Now, again, I think Bush is a terrible president. He deserves to be held accountable for the Patriot Act. He deserves to be punished for his poorly planned Iraq war. And to the extent that his reelection would validate these policies, I would hate to see him get a second term. But Kerry voted for both the Patriot Act as well as the Iraq war, and he’s had neither the guts nor the honesty to outright defend or denounce those decisions. Like Bush and his Republican Party, Kerry deserves to be punished and Democrats deserve to be punished for choosing him. They had a chance to give us a real choice in this election. They could’ve given us someone who pledged to uphold the Constitution, but they didn’t. And they could’ve given us someone who pledged to scale back our presence in 130 countries, but they didn’t do that, either.

Looking back, I could’ve voted for Howard Dean. I didn’t know it when he was still running—and make no mistake, the man was imperfect—but he ended up offering the only real alternative (save for Dennis Kucinich, though that’s a real stretch of the word “alternative"). For all intents and purposes, John Kerry is George Bush without the name George Bush. And if George Bush is going to win one way or another, I figure I might as well vote for George Bush.

Granted, this logic is addled. I won’t claim what I’m doing makes a whole lot of sense. George Bush is bad for this country, and I know it. He’s gone beyond mere contempt for the U.N.—which I’m all right with—and managed to make the whole world hate us. That’s so not cool. But I am so sick of P. Diddy and his patronizing “Vote or Die” shtick that I feel I have no choice but to vote for the guy I assume he despises. That’s what I’m doing. I’m voting for Bush because Eminem thinks Kerry would somehow be better. If these Hollywood-types want a Big Gov’t president, they’ve already got one, and I’m going to do whatever I can—as a swing state voter—to keep him in power on their behalf. Maybe next time they’ll give us a real choice when they tell me to “Choose or Lose.”

It’s my vote and I’ll do what I damn well want with it. I will pull the Bush lever, and then I will wash my hands. They want it. They got it. God bless America.

Oh, and God help us all.

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