Driving Votes: Jenny's Blog - Archived Entry

I watched Bush’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention from a pizza shop in midtown Manhattan. Blocks away at Madison Square Garden, our president addressed the nation and presented a rosy simulacrum of reality; schools were getting better, Medicare was strengthened, we had tax relief and a growing economy, we were “extend[ing] the frontiers of freedom” and fighting evil, our foreign policy had made us safer by a process involving “careful diplomacy” and “clear moral purpose”…. Glued to the TV screen and mesmerized by the glossed-over convention world of pomp, circumstance, and applause, I could almost believe that everything was fine.

But then I stepped back on to the streets of New York and the fairy tale snapped. Because here in this city where such an accomplished leader would be welcomed with celebration, the streets were blockaded and guarded by cops in riot gear. New Yorkers and tourists had gathered on corners to watch the spectacle that was the delegates exiting the convention and to greet them with boos and cries of “Shame on you!” and “Go home. Stop using our city!” I stood with the crowds and marveled at the absurdity of it all: that we were thus divided, our leader versus the people, in what had sounded to me like a thriving democracy and during what could potentially be the joyful epitome of the democratic process, the (re-?)election of the president.

While I might write off this negative sentiment as attributable to bad choice of venue on the part of the Republicans, my conversations with people in swing states around the country beg me to consider otherwise. In Nevada, I met an elderly woman who finds it increasingly difficult to pay for her medication and who is definitely not voting for Bush, nor will any of her friends if she can help it. In Pennsylvania, I spoke with a taxi driver struggling to make ends meet for his family who told me nothing ever changes and who’s so angry that he’s not voting at all. In North Carolina, I talked with an aspiring doctor from a low income family who told me of months spent with a toothache because he was unable to get health insurance and who is voting for Kerry. In Florida, I encountered newly registered voters living in housing projects who hoped that the democratic process might lead to better, though they were still waiting and knew it wouldn’t happen under Bush.

These are the works of an administration that believes that "government should help people improve their lives, not try to run their lives” and a president who seems to think he has accomplished this. Bush’s acceptance speech list of achievements may ring true for some (“careful diplomacy” and “clear moral purpose” in foreign policy notwithstanding- you can only stretch the truth so far even for purposes of argument), but for a disproportionate number of Americans the sound is hollow. I suppose I shouldn’t expect any more from a president who has incited a country to divide over social issues (see: gay marriage, abortion, the role of church in government) while advancing an elitist and neoconservative agenda (see: tax cuts favoring the wealthy, war, diplomatic isolation). However, my unflagging hope that when a figurehead stands before the nation, power just might be speaking truth to the people gives me higher expectations. Bush falls inexcusably short of even my lowest.

I understand the appeal of subscribing to Bush’s convention night obfuscations. Believing that we have done good for our people and the world under the current administration is much more comfortable than confronting the reality that we have failed miserably on both counts. Yet we owe it to the vast numbers who continue to struggle in “the greatest nation on earth” and to those who have died in conflict to put aside the rhetoric. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a cowboy for that matter, to realize that we can do better; it does take a willingness to face our failures head on and to make a change.