> There's a great many people that are planning on voting for George Bush this election. I don't really want to get into debating why one should vote one way or the other, but there's been something that I just don't understand in this election cycle: Why would someone vote for George Bush in this election?

I've finally made up my mind to vote for Bush in the last couple of days. A big reason is one that Sam already mentioned in his post: the Supreme Court appointments. Supreme Court justices exert a significant influence over our nation for decades, while a president can only do a few years' worth of damage during his term of office.

I think I'll answer a slightly different question than Faux Pas posed: what would Kerry have to do to get my vote?

1) Kerry would have to go beyond expressions of concern over the need to fix Social Security and promises to fix it, and actually explain *how* he could do it. Neither candidate has done that yet, so far as I know.

2) Kerry would, similarly, have to provide more details about his plan to wipe out the federal deficit. Again, neither candidate has satisfactorily explained their plans to reduce or eliminate the deficit.

These are minimal criteria. To make me really *comfortable* in giving Kerry my vote, he'd have to be a more centrist Democrat. He's not, which is a big reason why it's not an easy and obvious choice to pick him over President Bush.

In the "plus" side for Kerry, I'd put the following:

1) He gives us an instant (but possibly short-lived) infusion of credibility in the world community. A lot of anti-Americanism is actually anti-Bushism, and the antipathy towards America is starting to have concrete results -- on the market for American products overseas, for example. Too, whether or not Kerry's ideas about America's role in the world are good or not, he at least appreciates the *importance* of diplomacy in a way that the Bush administration has never shown.

2) Kerry seems likelier to make a strong push for policy changes in areas such as environmental conservation and health care. I might not agree with his solutions to these problems, but I do want more attention paid to the problems than they get now. Kerry might give some initial impetus to the effort to tackle these issues.

To change the question yet again, what would Bush have to do to make me comfortable in voting for him? Simply: he'd have to display some understanding of the difference between "resolve" and "muleheaded stubbornness". If I thought he were susceptible to learning from mistakes, I'd give him my vote a lot less grudgingly.

Iss