Taking the offensive this November

After reading what seemed to be the billionth claim about how the Republicans are doing a terrible job at running the government and that there is going to be a major shift in power after the elections this November, I finally started to get aggravated. I’m no fan of Republicans, and there are few things I have been less pleased with than that party’s platform and its current strategy of running the country. However, one of these few things that do please me less is the way the Democrats run elections.

Let’s start by examining the 2004 Presidential election. It was an election that was ripe for the Democrat’s taking: George Bush was becoming unpopular after starting the Iraq War, the economy wasn’t in great shape, and very little was happening on the domestic reform front.

With an incumbent in such a compromised position, all the Democrats had to do to claim the victory was produce a decent candidate: not legendary, not even great. Just good.

So they pooled the resources of their entire political party to find a fitting candidate to be America’s next President. Who did they come up with? Senator John Kerry, a man about as charismatic as a lawn gnome and whose only positive attribute was that he wasn’t George Bush. If fact, I distinctly remember that every person I talked to who voted for Kerry gave me the exact same reason: “Well, uhh, at least he’s not Bush. Bush is stupid.”

I realize that the intelligence level of George W. Bush is definitely a contestable topic, but the point I’m getting at is this: You can’t expect to get elected to office solely on the grounds that you’re not somebody else.

When you use that strategy, all those precious swing voters that we hear about every election will usually decide that they would rather elect a President who has some direction to his actions (albeit a direction that some don’t like) over a potential President who doesn’t seem to have his mind made up on anything at all, except that he disagrees with the incumbent on some issues.

And now we return to the present day, where the Democratic Party seems to be getting ready for the upcoming election using the same strategy that worked so horribly for them last time. Opinions writers all over the country are heralding the Democrats as being shoo-ins because of the apparent failure of the Republicans currently in power.

The Democratic candidates seem to be firmly adopting the philosophy that since their opponents are doing a good job of getting themselves voted out of office, they needn’t bother trying to get voted in. And to be honest, if the roles were reversed, I’m pretty sure that the Republicans would be doing the same thing.

This seems to be the new universally-used but never-stated strategy for elections in our country: vote for me because I’m not nearly as bad as the other guy. I know I can’t speak for the entire American public, but I know I would much prefer a candidate that took the offensive. I want to elect someone who steps forward and says, “I want to run the government because I’m better than you.”

I know I can’t solve all the problems facing the nation, so why would I want a President or Congressman who was “just like you and me”? Good government officials should be smarter, more capable, and better leaders than the average Joe, because we expect them to find solutions that most people can’t come up with.

That’s exactly what the Democrats are failing to do again this election year. Instead of rising to the opportunity that the Republicans have presented them by fielding some good candidates, they have decided to passively let Congressional seats come to them. Unfortunately for them, I think they will be disappointed with the results.