Linda, in your article Holding My Nose and Voting Republican, you make clear why we should be disappointed with the performance of the Republicans. You state that you are sickened by the fiscal irresponsibility, scandals, demagoguery, and lack of leadership. I agree with you. This record must be particularly disgusting to the conservative voters. Two of their most important principles, moral leadership and fiscal discipline, are absent in today’s Republican Party. When you say they should be reelected anyway, your argument falls apart.

You state you do not trust the Democrats to lead the country in times of uncertainty and war. When have we ever lived in times of certainty? Your statement that the Democrats have demonstrated “time after time” that they oppose the most effective means of fighting terrorism is without merit. That argument would carry more weight if you gave a few concrete examples. You give none. You predict that the Democrats will interfere with the National Security Agency’s ability to intercept terrorist communications and grant the terrorists access to our civilian courts. Making predictions about what might happen is not the same as demonstrating how the Democrats have opposed effective antiterrorist activities. The United States Supreme Court ruled the military tribunals employed by the Bush administration to be illegal. The court is composed of mostly Republican appointees. The current administration has never presented any evidence showing that their wiretaps have produced intelligence that could not have been obtained with a warrant.

When you say you do not trust the Democrats to do the right thing in Iraq, it implies that you know what the right thing is. Please tell us. When the Democrats demanded a timetable for our withdrawal, the administration protested loudly. “Stay the course” was the battle cry. Now that President Bush has suggested we should begin thinking about a timetable, has it become the right thing? It is easy to say we need tough tactics in dealing with North Korea and Iran. What exactly are these tough tactics? Should we go to war against these countries? Isn’t the Bush administration’s tough talk about the “axis of evil” at least partially responsible for North Korea’s nuclear escalation? It cannot be said that the tough tactics we have been using for decades in the Middle East have produced any useful outcome.

Saying that we should fear the economic ramifications of a Democratic majority is nonsense. Our economy has done better under Democratic leadership than Republican. Michael Kinsley, in his article for the Washington Post, looked at more than 40 years of economic data. The data showed higher growth, lower unemployment, lower inflation, and lower deficits under Democratic presidents. The most recent example is the Clinton Administration. We had the longest economic expansion in American history (Kinsley 2). This expansion was accompanied by a great bull market for stocks. The stock market of that period was an engine of wealth creation. The tax increases imposed by that administration brought the federal budget into balance for the first time in decades. It was no fluke that the stock market performed well during the Clinton presidency. In The Future for Investors Jeremy Siegel, Ph.D., devotes a whole chapter to the question of stock market performance under Democratic and Republican administrations. His conclusion is that since 1948 to the 2005 Democratic presidents have an advantage of more than 5% annually (Siegel 21-22).

Many of the points you make in this article are illogical and contradictory. It does not make sense for you to say the current government has made a mess of the budget and, at the same time, you do not trust the opposition on economic issues. You state the Democrats are not about producing sound policies on the budget, business, and wealth creation. A comparison of the last two administrations shows exactly the opposite is true. You admit that the war in Iraq has been mishandled. You refuse to talk about the fact that it was ill conceived, resorting to the discredited view that because some Democrats voted to give President the authority he asked for they are equally responsible. You think the Democrats will cripple the most effective weapons against terrorism. Yet, you offer no evidence that the policies you support have been effective. There is no mention of the fact that the administration’s own security agency recently issued a statement saying current policies have been counter productive (Mazzetti 1). The war in Iraq, the secret prisons, and our treatment of prisoners have all helped to create more terrorists. Our prestige has declined around the world. We have given up a great asset by losing the moral high ground on issues of torture and human rights. It is ridiculous for you to dismiss the importance of this by saying “the democrats are worrying about what others think.”

“Pyrrhus on the Potomac” makes the seriousness of the adverse effects of the Iraq War clear. In this briefing written for the Project on Defense Alternatives, Carl Conetta details the costs of the post 9-11 wars. The most damning statistics from this report are the ones concerning increased terrorist activity after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. He reports a 75 percent increase in terrorist activity even when incidents in Iraq are removed from the calculation. The data he uses is from a terrorism database maintained by the Rand Corporation and funded by the Department of Homeland Security. There has been a large budgetary and human cost as well. The rule of Pyrrhus is certainly an apt analogy for our current situation. President Bush has had a number of military victories that are not worth their cost.

The coming election is one of the most important in my lifetime. We need to punish the party in power for their corruption and mismanagement. Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.” Let us do something different on Election Day.

Works Cited

Conetta, Carl. “Pyrrhus on the Potomac.” PDA Briefing Memo 18 (2006): 2-7.

Kinsley, Michael. “Do the Math.” Washingtonpost.com. 1 Aug. 2004.

Today in Opinions. 1 Nov 2006 <http://www.washingtonpost.com>

Mazzetti, Mark. “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat.” New York

Times. 24 Sep. 2006. The New York Times Inc. 5 Dec. 2006. <http://www.nytimes.com>

Siegel, Jeremy. The Future for Investors. New York: Crown, 2005.