The Anchoress

Had a chat with a person from Australia who insists that Kerry will be a better president than Bush, although he admits that he cannot tell me anything Kerry has done in the last 20 years that suggests he would be good presidential material or - more importantly - CIC material. “Elections are about the incumbent,” he insisted, “if the incumbent has done a good job, you retain him; if he has done poorly, you fire him.”

Well.

Firstly…I just can’t understand how anyone can say they have no idea about Kerry’s record, no clear sense of him, and yet believe he is up to the job. On the basis of…what, air?

An election is NOT only about an incumbent. The challenger must be vetted; he must be scoped out to discover if he is up to the job.

I’m a former Democrat and at one time I admired John Kerry, mostly because I believed what I read about him. I’ve looked at him now for over a year, and I have come to the conclusion that he is without core, without spine and without conscience. Moreover, I have some serious concerns about his mental health, given some of the whoppers he’s told and his “magic hat.”

For this reason, it has become very important to me to get a chance to view his release papers from the US NAVY. I want to see his fitness reports. I want to see what his superiors thought of him, and I am interested - very interested - in discovering exactly what was the status of his original discharge. These are not irrelevancies.

John Kerry’s votes in the senate tell us a great deal about his sense of the importance of the military, and in these times, such information is crucial. The fact that he suggested cutting intelligence by 6 BILLION dollars after the first WTC bombing is very telling. All of it is relevant.

I am no class warrior, and no hater. My concerns about Kerry are not simply that he is “not Bush”. There are legitimate questions here that the press (still curious about Bush’s ANG service, yet completely incurious about Kerry’s own military records) will not ask, questions that an informed electorate MUST ask.

Is this election about keeping or firing an incumbent? I have managed people. I know that if I had an employee who, early into his stint, found himself managing crisis situations not of his own making and who had performed imperfectly but effectively, had still managed to bring in a spreadsheet showing growth instead of stagnation or loss, had shown a propensity for stability and a doggedness to get the job done, and who had remained steadfast in the face of enormous personal disregard, name-calling, distortion and outright hate from those in surrounding offices, I’d have to take a DAMN CLOSE LOOK at anyone who might replace him, and the fact is, the new applicant would have to be pret-ty impressive for me to let the first employee go.

John Kerry does not allow, will not allow me to take that close look. And he has the press standing in front of him, making sure I don’t get too near. My difficult or awkward questions are not brought forth and so they cannot be answered. He has refused to allow me to look at the record of his work - his resume - if you will. He has refused to supply me with references from superiors. He has had people from those “other offices” come in to tell me he would be great for the job, but they cannot tell me WHY he would be great for the job, only that he is “not the other guy.”

The problem is, I have come to distrust the people in those “other offices” because they have been behaving so very strangely toward my employee, George W. Bush. I have caught them lying, several times, about him and about his close friends and associates, and because I can no longer trust them to tell me the truth, I have become suspicious of John Kerry, whom they advocate.

There is no way, no WAY I would consider hiring a man who will not let me check his references over a man who has performed well for me in the face of huge odds. There is no way I would consider hiring a man who looked over my employee’s work exclaiming, “I have a plan; I can do a better job!” while refusing to tell me what those plans might be, or why I should BELIEVE he would do a better job. There is no way I would ever hire a man who will not step up to the plate and take a risk by telling me something specific.

No way.

This is not wing-nuttery. This is plain old logic and sanity. That so many in the left can’t see it makes me understand even more why I am no longer a woman of the left.