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My friend UltraBob is looking for some talking points that he can use to persuade the Bush-leaning members of his family to reconsider their support for the incumbent. Sure, it would be easy to direct them to Luis’ series on Reasons to Not Vote for Bush, but assume that we are looking for a simple list of, say, five points to get the discussion started. What would be on your list?

In the interest of creating an atmosphere of open discussion, feel free to contribute a list of five reasons why you feel Bush deserves our support, if you feel that he does.

Sen. Robert Byrd’s recent remarks on the trouble in Iraq probably took more time to deliver than Bush has been spending on briefings on the situation in Iraq.

It is staggeringly clear that the Administration did not understand the consequences of invading Iraq a year ago, and it is staggeringly clear that the Administration has no effective plan to cope with the aftermath of the war and the functional collapse of Iraq. It is time—past time—for the President to remedy that omission and to level with the American people about the magnitude of mistakes made and lessons learned. America needs a roadmap out of Iraq, one that is orderly and astute, else more of our men and women in uniform will follow the fate of Tennyson’s doomed Light Brigade…

I’m not sure how much time Senator Byrd spent preparing these remarks, but I bet it would have taken him more than 20 minutes, which is how much attention Bush has been paying to the increasingly dire situation in Iraq.

Insurgency spreads across Iraq

At his ranch near Crawford, Texas, President Bush held a 20-minute telephone conference call to discuss the fast-breaking events in Iraq with top Cabinet officials including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleeza Rice and Richard Meyers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. Bush, the fine men and women of our armed forces are dying in a war that you have mismanaged from the very beginning. Would it be too much to ask for you to spend, say, even one minute per life lost keeping abreast of the situation? I mean, I understand that you’ve got some serious brush problems on that ranch of yours, but don’t you feel any sort of, you know, responsibility for making sure that this whole “liberation of Iraq” thing goes well?

Call me a workaholic, but I would forego vacations during periods of armed conflict if:

• I were commander-in-chief
• I had started the war myself, on false pretenses, in spite of the fact that it was widely recognized as a distraction from the war I should be fighting
• the guy seeking to replace me was publicly accusing me of “one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment” ever
• I had a self-imposed deadline to hand over power coming up in, oh, a few weeks

Any of these things ringing a bell?

I’ve following the recent speculation that Senator McCain might make a good running mate for John Kerry. Although the notion strikes me as improbable on a number of levels, it’s one that I would very enthusiastically support. I think McCain is a particularly outstanding example of the kind of no-nonsense, good-government, responsible and accountable conservatives that our country desperately needs more of (as opposed to the G.W. Bush variety—I mean, really, we’d be better off with a government run by the cast of the Muppet Show!).

What excites me more than anything, though, is the prospect that a Kerry/McCain pairing could reignite notions of bipartisan cooperation that have long been all but extinguished in our national dialog. Our political system is almost hopelessly fractured into two opposing camps that are mutually contemptuous (and both equally worthy of generous heapings of scorn and ridicule), but a Kerry/McCain ticket could do a lot to smooth over those differences by showing that the sensible elements of both parties can set aside their differences and work together for the good of our country, not merely the partisan issue du jour.

McCain has said that he has no problems with the philosophy of the Democratic party. Likewise, I have no problems with his pet issues (balanced budget, campaign finance reform, staying the course in Iraq, etc.), so we mesh well on these issues. I also understand that Kerry and McCain know and trust each other well, which would be a tremendous asset to any administration.

Another very compelling upside to such an arrangement, in my view, is that McCain would serve as a built-in check on the Kerry administration (and no matter what your political views, you cannot possibly deny the better checks and balances are desperately needed in our government these days). There is no doubt in my mind that Kerry would be an infinitely better president than Bush, but he would no doubt be an even better president with a responsible, conservative figure like McCain always involved in the high-level decisions. That balance is very appealing to me; I suspect that it would appeal to many other Americans as well.

With McCain on the ticket, we would be gaining all that is good and sensible about the GOP, minus all the faith-based intelligence, pandering to the religious right, and wholesale corporate subservience that is so appalling about the current administration. Where we now have a dim-witted hawkish administration that starts wars without plans for finishing them, with McCain we would have a sharp-eyed, pragmatic, and equally hawkish one. Where we now have an administration that routinely abuses our nation’s finances, with McCain we would have a scrappy maverick just itching to shoot down pie-in-the-sky projections. What’s not to like about these things?

If I were John Kerry, I would be willing to cede broad authority to McCain on a fair number of important issues in exchange for his support on core Democratic ones. Ultimately, I think this sense of compromise is best for our country, whereas the all-or-nothing, lock-step conformity of our current government is leading us in directions I’d rather not go.

Although the idea strikes me as unlikely, I still find it very appealing. If John Kerry can find a way to get McCain on the ticket, I will gladly double my campaign contributions between now and the election.

Update

Or maybe it’s a little bit less improbable than I thought. Kerry is certainly making efforts to work with McCain on an issue that our Republican friend can’t sell to the Bush people, ending corporate welfare. 

I ask because Bush, you see, has already had the first laugh.

Democrats Call Bush’s Comedy Skit Tasteless

At the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association event in Washington on Wednesday, Bush playfully provided mock captions to a series of photographs taken in and around the White House.

One series of photos showed the president in awkward positions—on his knees, looking behind draperies and moving furniture in the Oval Office—accompanied by such comments as “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,” “Nope, no weapons over there!” and “Maybe under here?”

A crowd of about 1,500 politicians, journalists and celebrities generally laughed along with the president’s presentation.

This is Bush’s idea of a good laugh, is it? I hope you’ll pardon me if I don’t laugh along with the others. These weapons weren’t so funny last year, when he was warning the entire world that we had to invade Iraq right away—or else! Apparently they are pretty funny now though.

Kerry’s campaign issued a statement late yesterday charging Bush with “a stunningly cavalier attitude” toward a serious subject. “George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven’t found them, and now he thinks that’s funny?” the statement said.

This, to me, seems like a pretty straight-forward, legitimate criticism of the president’s behavior—which, aside from being profoundly offensive, is really inappropriate in light of the fact that one of our few remaining allies, Poland, has been saying that it was misled on the WMD issue. How does Bush plan to respond to that, with jokes about “Freedom kielbasa,” perhaps?

Okay, readers, help me make a decision. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I feel a lot is at stake in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Lately, I’ve been giving some thought to taking the week prior to the election off so I can go home to campaign. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel that I should save the money and send a large financial contribution instead. As much as I might like to, I can’t do both.

Here’s the thing: I only have until Wednesday of next week to decide. That’s the cutoff date for applying for several consecutive days off later this year.

Given the choice, which would you choose? It’s too hard to tell several months in advance which Kerry will need more in the final days of the campaign, money or extra hands. The fact that I will be voting in a battleground state that went to Bush in 2000 makes the decision a tough one.