No, I'm not going to lose." Such direct words came directly from President Bush a few weeks ago, on NBC's "Meet the Press." On the program, the notoriously press-shy White House resident chatted with Tim Russert about Iraq, big bad nuclear weapons, or lack thereof, budgets of mass destruction and the upcoming election. The above quote was a gem from election talk and one of the few statements he gave without a mass of accompanying qualifiers.
How can our President sit and say the economy's on the upswing? Unemployment is high, job growth is slow, and although the stock market has made some gains, tax cuts without spending cuts still equal bad news for this and the next generation, which are going to bear the brunt of it.
I find it difficult to believe that Bush honestly thinks his budget projections will prove true--a brief browse through the recent Economic Report of the President makes it painfully clear that they things are headed for decline. He's either incredibly stupid or unmatchededly callous. Neither of those qualities are high on my list of criteria for leading the free world, but maybe that's just me.
The rules of the Republican Party, as of the last Republican Convention in 2001, state that it is the party of the open door, of equality for all and favoritism for none. Here's where I get confused. For example:
In his State of the Union address, Bush chastised judges who "insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people" by granting gay couples marriage rights in Massachusetts. I'll ignore the memory of judges deciding that dubious election results were enough to force a terrible president on the people, and pick instead at his meaning. In addition to criticizing the Massachusetts court, Bush mentioned that "the people" will soon only have the consitutional process to protect them from the arbitrary will of such laws. Last time I checked, gay men and women were part of "the people." "People" exist outside the conservative realm. Bush's people aren't the only ones the Republican Party should be supporting in their equality for all and favoritism for none.
In a separate statement Bush described marriage as a "sacred institution between a man and a woman." For many, this is pretty accurate. But where do you draw the line between a sacred institution and a state one? Marriage, in legal terms, isn't about the merging of souls, but of the merging of assets and responsibility for child support. Marriage gets and should get its warmer definitions from culture and religion, two things the government theoretically attempts to avoid. Why deny homosexual couples the joys of prenups and divorce lawyers, aging spouses and contracted fidelity? The government does not exist to enforce religious doctrine, but to protect its people and assure them all a fair chance at their pursuit of happiness. The "activist judges," as Bush calls them, are not forcing any arbitrary will.
The Massachusetts court is preventing the government from using religious definitions to allow marriage rights to some couples and not others. What, in the end, is being forced? If you don't like gay marriage, don't get one, and if you can't stand the sight of one, don't live in a state that allows them (there are quite a few).
And I know that Republicans aren't all bad people. Some of my best friends are Republicans. Like, one or two. And I recognize the value of intelligent, conservative, Republican-like people, though I find the DCU-fueled fire about Duke's lack of Republican humanities professors kind of ridiculous. I've had classes with both Robert Brandon, who recently made the major mistake of saying something remotely colorful to a Chronicle reporter, and Michael Munger, a New Sense cover boy, and learned a lot from both of them. Was I aware of their political affiliations? Sure. It's part of getting to know professors as people. Their teaching was still effective, and when Munger revealed his dual (I think) flaws of being both a libertarian and a Tar Heel fan, I had enough respect for him to consider it irrelevant, though I still have minor nightmares about having a Republican child, discovering their future polical leaning through a high-tech amniocentesis and going through the agony of raising a child who'll believe that tax cuts solve everything and that abstinence-only sex education works.
But to expect Republican voters in a department like cultural anthropology, whose research has more or less confirmed that, contrary to the current White House beliefs, the American way is not for everyone, is laughable. What, out of curiosity, are the stats on the econ department?
All we have to do in November is repeat the last election plus one state. It can happen. It's just a paltry sum of electoral votes to prove Bush's Meet the Press vision of victory wrong--just another empty statement to the people of America.
Meghan Valerio is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every third Thursday.
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