For some unknown reason, the Wave chose to run a Progressive article in its last issue before the election opposing the president's reelection even though it was in last week's paper and not officially scheduled again, per the Wave's own calendar, until next week. At the same time, the Wave did not print Stu Mirsky's planned column for the same week, supporting the president's re-election, even though he had sent them an article specifically tailored for this issue and had advised them in advance that it should appear in the week before the election. Instead they ran a piece of his about city government that had no relation to the upcoming critical election.

We don't know why this occurred and hope it was a simple oversight. For those who are interested, here is the piece Stu had sent in for this week. Perhaps you can send it around to anyone you know who is still on the fence. Every little bit may help in this critical election!

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THE ROCKAWAY IRREGULAR

by Stuart W. Mirsky

The Bush Report Card

Writing in the Financial Times, columnist Max Boot recently described the Bush team as "dysfunctional, not duplicitous," arguing against the left's oft-advanced notion that Bush et al are liars. Noting that the embarrassing undercount of terrorist incidents by the State Department, which Secretary of State Colin Powell had to publicly disavow some time back, was too obvious to have been part of a planned effort to deceive,  Boot nevertheless went on to add that continuing mistakes of this nature by the administration do seem to suggest problems. Combined with intelligence gaffes concerning wmds in Saddam's Iraq and some administration flip-flopping over support for former Iraqi dissident and Defense Department favorite Ahmed Chalabi, along with various other false starts and reversals, Boot argued that Bush appears to have failed to bang the necessary heads together to force agreement between strong-willed cabinet members.

Boot has a point. Bush, from the first, appeared under-credentialled for the job he took and it showed in his uncertain persona during the 2000 campaign and in the early months of his administration. With only a five-year stint as Texas governor under his belt, Bush won his office by presenting himself to voters as an outsider. And he was. Unlike Kerry, his erstwhile Democratic challenger who has a resume of government service decades long, and oratorical skills that bespeak years of practiced speechifying, Bush does not exude "presence" or the easy confidence of a long time politician accustomed to the perqs and deference of public office. But if Bush came to office as a political tyro, no one can deny that he's now had close to four years of very intense on-the job-training. So the question is what's that worth to the country? What does the Bush report card show now?

Well, we know the president has had problems with some crewmen who've gone overboard. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil and former national security coordinator Richard Clarke come readily to mind. George Tenet, Bush's CIA director who recently resigned under the shadow of two highly critical reports, one by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and another from the 9/11 Commission, didn't cast the Bush administration in a particularly good light either. (Tenet, like Clarke, was a holdover from the Clinton administration . . . suggesting still another flawed Bush tendency: an overdependency on "experts" because of his own lack of detailed familiarity with their areas of presumed expertise).

There also seems to be an unfortunate feud going on in the Administration, just below the surface, between the Departments of State and Defense, a feud that's not doing the president or the country much good right now. As Boot noted Bush needs to get hold of this one fast, too. Unfortunately, the most obvious way to do this, by firing or threatening to fire one or both of the key players, is highly problematic. Powell is popular with many moderate voters and seems untouchable for that reason alone, while Rumsfeld is too deeply involved in the critical restructuring of the military. As former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recently noted in his report on the Abu Ghraib affair, Rumsfeld's departure now would be a "victory" for America's enemies. Banging heads means you have to have ultimate power over the "heads" involved, and Bush clearly doesn't have a completely free hand at this point.

Still, his economic policies, despite Democratic carping about tax cuts being bad for the economy, seem to be working just fine. Taxing and spending is always a difficult balance and Bush has been too easy on the spending side, to be sure. But tax cuts have worked as promised, delivering an improving economy with continued low interest rates, even as the projected budget deficit begins to come back down because of increased revenues reflecting better economic times . . . again precisely as predicted by Bush and his people. A strong and growing economy is essential to the war on terror and Bush's policies have clearly delivered that.

On the international front Bush has dealt proactively and energetically with the terrorists who declared war on us and brought us 9/11. So far (fingers crossed), further attacks within our borders have been avoided through a combination of tightened homeland security and aggressive search and destroy operations abroad. More, tyrannical and internationally destabilizing regimes have been replaced in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results of these efforts aren't all in yet, despite the critics' eager pre-judgments of failure, but if Bush can pull this off, history will credit him with dramatically changing the face of the Middle East. Of course, he hasn't made friends of the French and German leadership by his actions in this theater, and most Europeans seem to have issues with him. But he's not Europe's president, he's ours, and his job is to look to our interests, not theirs. Since they'd as soon capitulate to the terrorists who threaten world stability today as fight them, it's not clear that their preferences ought to make a whole lot of difference to American voters.

So when we come down to the wire this Election Day the choice will pivot on two issues: Are Bush's policies the right ones for the country and is Bush the man for the job? I think the evidence shows his policies on the major issues of the day are, indeed, the right ones. Whether we'll judge him man enough, however, is another question, depending, perhaps, on how he he is seen to be handling the relentless carping going on within and outside his administration. But, at the least, no one can deny that he is, by now, an experienced hand . . . or suggest that his experience should somehow count for less than that of a lifetime politician like John Kerry who, as even liberal columnist Al Hunt recently noted in the Wall Street Journal, has only "a mediocre record as a legislator." There's more to being president than the penchant for pompous self-congratulation and exaggerated self-importance Kerry exudes. As Vice President Cheney noted in his speech at the Republican convention, while senators like Mr. Kerry can whiffle and waffle all over the place, changing their minds with the tides, presidents don’t have that luxury. The president is the “tie-breaker” in his administration. His decisions count.

So if you like Kerry's policies, then he's the guy to vote for. Or, if you doubt Bush's ability to guide the ship of state, then again, you may want to take a chance on a career senator who made his name opposing the kind of military spending that has given us the tools we need to fight terrorists today and who has consistently favored higher taxes and spending. But if you think Bush has chosen a tough but necessary course and is successfully guiding this ship of ours into port, despite fiercely adverse headwinds, then the fact that he came to the job without a lifetime of political posturing behind him is no reason to fire the captain now.