John Kerry For President

At last, Matt's valuable endorsement is revealed -- Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. More below the fold.

Democracy, they say, is the worst form of government except for all the others. But why would that be? Not, certainly, because of the superior wisdom of the voting public who, if you read any of the public opinion literature you'll swiftly see, have almost no grasp of substantive policy issues and only a very vague familiarity with what the different candidates stand for. And yet, it seems to work pretty well. This is, I think, primarily because the voters have a habit of kicking incumbents out of office when thinks don't seem to be going well, and reelecting them when things are going well.

This is often not a very sound analytic approach. Candidates get blamed for economic problems that are not really their fault (see, e.g., Jimmy Carter in 1980) or get praise beyond what they deserve for improvements in living conditions (see, e.g., Rudy Giuliani in 1997). Nevertheless, this crude approach has certain merits. In particular, it encourages officeholders to try and make things better. If an incumbent mayor knows that whether the crime rate rises or falls will seriously impact his electoral fortunes, he has reason to try and make the crime rate fall. If an incumbent president knows that a solid macroeconomic situation will benefit him on Election Day, he'll spend at least some time trying to make it come about.

The basic dynamic here serves democratic countries well. Officeholders do many things, but they spend at least some time trying to make things better.

Things are not better now than when George W. Bush took office. Instead, on virtually every front there has been deterioration. The proportion of the population at work has fallen. The number of people with health insurance has fallen. The number of people living in poverty has risen. The dollar -- and with it the average American's purchasing power -- has fallen. The federal government's fiscal capacity to cope with an unexpected crisis or the looming problems in Medicare financing has deteriorated. The esteem in which America is held in the world has fallen. The degree of trust foreign governments and the American people have in the US President's description of foreign threats has fallen. The number of terrorist attacks has risen. The state of human rights in China has fallen. Russia's progress toward democracy has been reversed. Politics in the non-Iraq portions of the Middle East are less liberal. In Iraq, a dictatorship and the human suffering of the sanctions regime has been replaced by chaos and the human suffering of a civil war. The American military is less prepared to cope with a foreign threat. The propensity of friendly governments to cooperate with us has eroded markedly. One could go on.

Under the circumstances, the only reason for voting for Bush would be if you had some very good reason to believe that John Kerry would bring about some kind of calamity, and no such reason exists. For all the loud talk of Kerry's alleged weakness, this would only possibly manifest itself in a greater reluctance to involve the country in a second preventative war that, in light of the dire state of the American military, would be unwise anyway. Kerry's tax proposals would leave the rates no higher than they were just a few years ago when such rates were demonstrably compatible with economic strength. Where Bush has taken steps to make things better -- in Afghanistan, on education policy, on AIDS funding -- Kerry promises not to reverse Bush's good initiatives, but to go beyond what the president's ideological commitments will allow him to do.

Kerry has, throughout his life, been a serious person seriously dedicated to public service and the public good. His record is not perfect by any means, but compares favorably with those of the overwhelming majority of politicians with a comparable level of experience. He has done less to make the world a better place than one could have, but he has done far more than most -- certainly more than any of the whiners in the punditocracy who complain about his lack of achievements. Kerry's proposals for health care, military reform, intelligence reform, public diplomacy, and global education promotion are all very good. His proposals for taxation, domestic education, and the so-called "social issues" are, at minimum, an improvement over those of his opponent.

But one must admit that nothing is for sure, and perhaps, in office, Kerry will do a bad job. I see no particular reason to think that he will, but he certainly might. If that happens, we can fire him in 2008. We know that the current officeholder has done a bad job by his own terms -- "compassionate conservatism" has not improved the plight of the poor, tax cutting has not improved the economy or even the average person's disposable income, preventative warfare has not halted nuclear proliferation, crossing names off the high-value target list is not stopping al-Qaeda, pounding the table is not spreading democracy, unilateralism is not producing a pro-American bandwagon, the size and intrusiveness of government is not lessening, even the number of abortions has increased. It is time for him to go. Kerry will almost certainly do better, and if he does not, the Republican Party will be encouraged to put up a more credible alternative next time around to try and get another shot at the reigns of power. To reward failure would be to wish for a downward spiral of bad leadership extending indefinitely into the future.