Quote:
War in Iraq -- both in favor
War on Terror -- both in favor
War on Drugs -- both in favor
Gay Marriage -- both opposed
Middle Class Tax Cuts -- both favor
Deficit Budgets -- each has theirs
Huge Boondoggles -- each has more than one.


Actually, I think these are the issues where we can best differentiate the candidates.

Iraq: "in favor" is a fair description of Bush but not a fair description of Kerry. He's been quite clear with his whole "wrong war, wrong time, ..." rhetoric. I believe Kerry's point is more along the lines of "now that we're stuck in this mess, we need to find a way out of it without tearing the Middle East into pieces."

Terror: Bush thinks Iraq has something to do with Islamic terrorists. Kerry doesn't.

Drugs: We're not hearing enough from either candidate on this issue.

Gay Marriage: Bush wants a constitutional ammendment and seems to be generally opposed to any sort of "civil union" concept. Kerry doesn't want an ammendment and seems to be in favor of some kind of civil union.

Tax cuts: both want cuts for the middle class, but you can distinguish them with their policy for the rich. Plus, Bush is all about corporate tax cuts and loopholes. If we're lucky, Kerry won't be.

Deficit: Bush clearly feels other priorities are more important than deficit reduction. Kerry at least pays some lip service to the deficit, and particularly toward how we need to cover the forthcoming Social Security crunch. Bush's private Social Security savings would only reduce the dollar flow into Social Security and would do nothing for the dollar outflow.

Boondoggles: Every president has boondoggles. I've never seen a candidate run on the platform of "No more boondoggles!" Although, if you replace "boondoggle" with "unjustified war that destabilize the Middle East", then maybe you're getting closer to Kerry's platform.

Personally, I think the big issues that need to be discussed and sadly aren't are things like environmental policy (global warming, pollution, etc.), the outsourcing debate (Kerry talks about changing tax incentives, but nothing about the sweatshop working conditions of international garmet workers), health care (particularly the way that medicines are priced and how lower-income or unemployed people will get coverage), and maybe even intellectual property issues (the erosion of fair use and the public domain, abuse of the patent system, etc.). Of these, the only issue that clearly differentiates the candidates is the environment and maybe some medical issues like stem cell research. I have no idea how either candidate feels about intellectual property reforms.

I'm not one of these people calling this "the most important election ever", but I think it's foolhardy to claim that Kerry is somehow equivalent to Bush.