How Bout Some Kerry Bashing?

Here's why I don't like Kerry too much: he panders to voters and makes misleading arguments as much as most politicians. I don't know how much to begrudge him for being this way. A significant part of the voting doesn't have the ability or doesn't want to make the effort to think critically. Misleading campaign commercials work. Rhetoric can be completely disconnected from reality and still influence people if the politician is "trustworthy" enough. And people love "tell it how it is" politicians except in the voting booth (e.g. John McCain, Howard Dean).

So I'm not sure if I want Kerry to have more integrity. Can running a campaign based on reason and logic beat a campaign based on emotion and rhetoric? That's a question I want answered in a less important campaign than one for the position of President. But at the same time, I get annoyed when I read passages like this one, in today's Washington Post:

The Kerry campaign contended in a statement that Bush "stubbornly refuses to offer help" even as higher gasoline prices, which have risen to more than $2 per gallon, will cost the average Oregon family an extra $1,006 a year and squeeze family budgets already hurt by a weak job market and higher costs for college.

What should the President do to offer help, cut taxes? Make a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to lower gas prices for the election? The President has almost no power to control gas prices. The one thing he tried, trying to arrange a deal with the ruling party in Saudi Arabia, was rightfully criticized, and if he suggested the other thing he could do, lowering the federal gas tax, wouldn't he be attacked for putting the country in further fiscal jeopardy to buy a few votes for the election?

Yet when the Bush campaign tries to make an issue of Kerry mentioning the idea of a 50-cent per gallon gas tax in an interview 10 years ago, and adds a "Kerry gas tax calculator," I wonder if returning the cheap shot is necessary to win?

The questions here are, "What is the penalty for honesty in politics?" And, "What price do we pay if the penalty is severe?"