In 2000 the Orlando Sentinel endorsed George W. Bush. In 2004... EDITORIAL Kerry for president Our position: The Bush presidency has disappointed us on almost all counts. Posted October 24, 2004 Four years ago, the Orlando Sentinel endorsed Republican George W. Bush for president based on our trust in him to unite America. We expected him to forge bipartisan solutions to problems while keeping this nation secure and fiscally sound. This president has utterly failed to fulfill our expectations. We turn now to his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, with the belief that he is more likely to meet the hopes we once held for Mr. Bush. Our choice was not dictated by partisanship. Already this election season, the Sentinel has endorsed Republican Mel Martinez for the U.S. Senate and four U.S. House Republicans. In 2002, we backed Republican Gov. Jeb Bush for re-election, repeating our endorsement of four years earlier. Indeed, it has been 40 years since the Sentinel endorsed a Democrat -- Lyndon Johnson -- for president. But we cannot forget what we wrote in endorsing Mr. Bush in 2000: "The nation needs a leader who can bring people together, who can stand firm on principle but knows the art of compromise." Four years later, Mr. Bush presides over a bitterly divided Congress and nation. The unity following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- the president's finest hour -- is a memory now. Mr. Bush's inflexibility has deepened the divide. Four years ago, we expressed confidence that Mr. Bush would replace the Clinton-Gore approach of frequent military intervention for one of selective involvement "using strict tests to evaluate U.S. national interests." To the president's credit, the war in Afghanistan met those tests. But today, U.S. forces also are fighting and dying in a war of choice in Iraq -- one that was launched to disarm a dictator who did not have weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea have worsened. Before the Iraq war, Mr. Bush brushed aside dissenting views -- some within his own government -- about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities. And because the president failed to round up more international support, more than 80 percent of the coalition forces in Iraq are American troops, and the United States is spending $1 billion a week on the conflict. Four years ago, we also called on Mr. Bush to pay down the nation's multitrillion-dollar debt before cutting taxes or increasing spending. Yet since then, he has pushed through massive tax cuts, and the national debt has risen from $5.8 trillion to $7.4 trillion. Discretionary spending -- not including defense and homeland security -- has risen 16 percent over three years. The president has not vetoed a single spending bill. Mr. Bush has been unwilling to reconsider any of his tax cuts, even as the rationale for them -- a huge budget surplus -- has vanished, and the country has gone to war. Other presidents have raised taxes to pay for wars; Mr. Bush is borrowing the money, leaving the bill for future generations. Four years ago, we called it a "disgrace" that 43 million Americans lacked health insurance. That number has risen under Mr. Bush to 45 million. Yet the plan he now touts on the campaign trail would reduce the ranks of the uninsured by less than 20 percent, and he has not offered a way to pay for it. Mr. Bush has been a disappointment in other crucial areas. He has weakened environmental protections, pushed an energy policy that would perpetuate America's oil dependence and given up on free-market agricultural reforms that could jump-start trade talks. Indeed, Mr. Bush has abandoned the core values we thought we shared with him -- keeping the nation strong while ensuring that its government is limited, accountable and fiscally responsible. We trust Mr. Kerry not to make the mistakes Mr. Bush has. Mr. Kerry's two decades of experience in the U.S. Senate have given him a solid grounding in both foreign and domestic policy. There is no disputing his liberal record representing Massachusetts, but we believe he has moved to the middle. In this campaign, he has put forth a moderate platform with fiscal discipline at its core. Despite his differences with Mr. Bush over the wisdom of the war, Mr. Kerry recognizes the imperative of securing and stabilizing Iraq. He would intensify efforts to enlist more foreign help, and speed up training of Iraqi forces and reconstruction in the country. Mr. Kerry would bolster national security by adding 40,000 troops to the overstretched U.S. military, and doubling its special forces. He would accelerate the program that secures nuclear material in the former Soviet Union before it can fall into the hands of terrorists. Mr. Kerry would enhance homeland security by doing more to protect ports and other vulnerable facilities. Unlike Mr. Bush, he understands that government accountability and civil liberties must not be needlessly compromised in the name of the war on terrorism. Mr. Kerry's health plan would extend coverage to 27 million Americans, more than three times as many as Mr. Bush's plan. Contrary to what the president has been saying on the campaign trail, Mr. Kerry's plan would be voluntary, and include private-sector options for coverage. Also to Mr. Kerry's credit, he has pledged to strengthen environmental protections. His energy plan would do far more to promote conservation and alternative fuels. Mr. Kerry proposes to pay for all of his plans, primarily by repealing tax cuts for Americans earning more than $200,000. He has not called for tax increases on middle-income Americans. Mr. Kerry has committed himself to reinstating pay-as-you-go rules that helped turn deficits into surpluses during the 1990s. Such rules would force him to scale back his plans if he can't pay for them. In sum, we believe Mr. Kerry would be a more bipartisan and effective leader than Mr. Bush. In the Nov. 2 general election, the Sentinel endorses John Kerry for president of the United States. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...oct24,0,6815713.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
They're not worth the 35% post-consumer, recycled dangling & hanging chads they're printed on. BTW - to add to the purpose of the thread... Three Ohio newspapers endorse Bush "Swingstate Status" gone?
Slate's staff and contributors posted their views on the election today http://www.slate.com/id/2108714/ just a quick count shows its 36-5 Kerry Advantage
Dozens of newspapers shift allegiance to Democrat camp David Teather in New York Thursday October 28, 2004 The Guardian Four years ago the Chicago Sun-Times endorsed George Bush for president. On Sunday, it became one of a growing number of American newspapers to admit they had got it wrong. At least 37 newspapers which backed Mr Bush in 2000 have switched sides to John Kerry. A Sun-Times editorial listed a number of reasons for withdrawing its support from Mr Bush. The administration, it said, had been "wilfully and woefully unprepared to face" the insurgency in Iraq. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were "a costly misstep in a time of war" and the paper was concerned by the secrecy of Mr Bush's "subordinates such as Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft". Mr Kerry, the paper said, acknowledged that the "United States is a world leader, not a rogue state". Others to have switched to the Democrats include the Los Angeles Daily News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Mr Bush's hometown newspaper, the Lone Star Iconoclast in Crawford, Texas. For the Memphis Commercial Appeal in Tennessee, it is the first time the paper has backed a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, 40 years ago. So far 200 readers have cancelled their subscriptions. "The letters page was pretty scorching this morning, but we feel we can sleep at night," said the editor, Chris Peck. "We just felt that the whole situation in Iraq has led to a really disturbing relationship between the US and other countries. [Mr Bush] has also created a polarised environment in this country and we feel we have to find some common ground." According to the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, Mr Kerry has been endorsed in the opinion pages of 142 US newspapers, with 123 backing Mr Bush. The papers supporting Mr Kerry have sales of 17.5m, compared with 12.5m for Mr Bush. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1337548,00.html
Another small town paper choose Kerry over Bush. 'Not Bush,' Kerry How disheartening it is to approach Nov. 2 with the choice boiling down to, more than anything else, a referendum on the presidency over the past four years. President Bush or not President Bush. Can an Election Day selection really come down to the resignation of this: Not him? Regrettably so. With that, we go with Sen. John Kerry. Four years ago, we put admittedly tenuous support behind George W. Bush in an election in which neither candidate did much to inspire. But that light endorsement was vindicated at full strength in the days after 9/11, a terrible moment filled with terrorist rage and innocent American blood that changed the world and presented a president resolute and capable. President Bush gave Americans the rock they needed to rally about in that dark time. But the actions the president took in the subsequent three years seemed prompted by bad advice and even worse aim, leaving a misguided war in Iraq as the centerpiece of a term of squandered opportunities. Sept. 11 led to the inevitable and absolutely necessary war in Afghanistan, where Taliban rule had allowed safe harbor for terrorists who took aim at the United States. And though 9/11 mastermind and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden remains on the run, the first free elections in Afghanistan in the past month represented an amazing accomplishment that should largely be credited to the Bush administration. But the war on terrorism produced a great and expensive distraction when the White House insisted that Saddam Hussein, a rotten dictator who suppressed his people and taunted the world, had to be taken down. Iraq, the president insisted, was a primary front as U.S. troops would take the war to the terrorists before they could bring the war to us. How will history judge President Bush on Iraq? That's hard to say. For today, it is increasingly glaring that the president sold Americans an exaggerated vision of the threat. Was Saddam a bad man? No doubt. Were United Nations resolutions ever going to tame him? Very much in doubt. But was Saddam contained? We argued before the war that he was. And hardly anyone can argue that the war went as planned. While White House officials talked of flowers and parades for our conquering troops, the celebration over the topping of Saddam's statue and ransacking of his palaces soon gave way to deadly resistance, death for 1,100 U.S. service men and women, and a reported rise in recruitment in terrorist organizations. A confident president, rarely given to admitting things aren't going as planned, speaks of freedom on the march. But it's hard to shake the voice of Sen. Richard Lugar, who supported the war but has been critical of the way the White House, in its rush to war, manhandled the effort toward disaster by neglecting to prepare a postwar plan anywhere near adequate. In Lugar's word, the performance showed signs of "incompetence." With allies like that, who needs "not-Bush" enemies. Meanwhile, the president's domestic agenda left conservative principles in the dust. Tax breaks, while appreciated in the short run, came in the face of rising spending, illustrating a fundamental disconnect between needs and means, as well as a willingness to have another generation pay for challenges we face right now. And it's not all on a war or homeland security. One example: Prescription drug coverage for seniors will account for one of the greatest expansions in the federal government's social spending in generations. In an administration that assured a nation that the best government is less government, No Child Left Behind became Washington's long-reach effort to solve problems in our neighborhood schools. All along, deficits soared. With conservatives like these, who needs liberals? All totaled, the president hasn't earned a second round. Still, we can't escape the uneasy feelings of a not-Bush vote. And we'll admit some intractable differences on our board. There were times when we had to agree that we weren't even on the same page, building arguments off of premises so far removed from each other that coming to an understanding of how anyone could pull the lever the opposite way didn't seem possible. So when we hear that undecideds are still out there, we get it. On Iraq, we've been equally frustrated with Kerry. Given the chance to vote against force, he passed. Now he insists that he wouldn't have voted for force if he'd known the president would have made such a mess of things. At the same time, for the rhetorical flourishes, the matter of managing Iraq is one of degrees between Kerry and Bush. Unable to back out now, both seem locked into finish-the-job strategies that come down to nuance. But in terms of keeping the nation safe, we're not convinced, as the president claims, that a Kerry presidency would leave Americans any more or less exposed to the dangers of terrorism than they are now. In terms of spending, Kerry is painted as "a Massachusetts liberal" because, well, he is. To call him a fiscal conservative would be a joke. But he seems able to see through the current mismatch between spending and tax cuts that have set up deficits far into the future. Besides, it's reasonable to believe a Republican Congress will stop Kerry from spending anything near what it would allow President Bush to spend. We're not taken by Kerry, but believe he would be capable in the White House. And eventually, we, like voters, have to go into the booth and put our finger by one name on the touch screen. With too many miscalculations in his wake, President Bush simply hasn't made the case for another term. Call it a "not Bush" vote if you care to, but Kerry gets the nod. Other Opinions Headlines from Friday, October 29, 2004 Lafayette Journal & Courier
