Party Favorites Would John McCain's White House be a significant change from the Bush administration?

Author: Will Bellaimey, Middlebury College Democrats

Okay, maybe "Bush's Third Term" is a little harsh. Nobody likes to be serving out someone else's term. Al Gore hated it in 2000, when people said he was just another four years of Clinton. That wasn't true. A Gore presidency was going to be sooo different from the job-creating, welfare-reforming, longest peacetime expansion of the economy-overseeing, nightmare that was the Clinton administration.

Gore and John McCain both know what it's like to be held responsible for someone else's record. They both were disappointed when their president failed to take serious action on climate change. They both wished their president had kept the focus on curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They both watched in horror as their president held and tortured hundreds of people, some of them under 16 years old, without even telling them what they were accused of.

Actually, Gore probably doesn't know what that last one feels like.

The point is, though McCain may have some minor differences with this president, on the central issues of our time, he might as well be Dick Cheney.

He will continue Bush's occupation of Iraq, straining our military with fifth and sixth tours of duty, and alienating a whole new generation in the Middle East.

He will expand inequality and balloon the deficit, making permanent and extending Bush's tax cuts to the super-rich.

He will appoint Bush style judges to the courts, the kind that think if a woman needs an abortion, she should get it in a back alley instead of a hospital.

He will continue avoiding serious health care reform, maintain No Child Left Behind, and keep tapping Americans' phones without warrants.

George W. Bush and the Republicans have the ship of state heading off a cliff, and John McCain suggests we turn the ship ten degrees to the right. We simply cannot take that risk.