[HoneyBadger]

I'm voting for Obama, for the simple reason that he's the most intelligent candidate. That's all I care about-that the President's brain be of the highest caliber possible. Everything else really doesn't matter.

As far as Bush being an idiot-he was and is. Don't kid yourself that he isn't-he can't string a sentence together, on a consistent basis, even if it's being fed to him-but he is an idiot surrounded by corrupt people, and corrupt himself, and the son of an intelligent, powerful, and knowledgeable father-also corrupt. I personally would prefer the term "malicious idiot", but "idiot" suffices, and is more easily proved.

Just because he's an idiot, though, doesn't mean he can't do harm, or allow harm to occur when it's done at the hands of his supporters.

And Gore would have been a better choice. Don't kid yourself there, either. Bush didn't do a damn thing to protect us from terrorists. He didn't even know how to respond to a terrorist attack, and Hurricane Katrina was proof enough for anyone how ineffective the Bush administration has been at responding to threats to this country. And that was just bad weather.

Bush's response to terrorism was to ensure the safety of his Saudi Arabian friends (and the country of Saudi Arabia, because that's where all his Saudi Arabian friends keep their stuff), to concentrate his efforts on grabbing and holding on to as much oil and money as possible, panic everyone as much as possible, and erode our constitutional laws.

To put it more plainly: he made bad choices for this country, and good choices for himself.

If we accept that Gore was a mediochre, vanilla, average choice, we can then suppose (purely for purposes of speculation) that he would have made mediochre, vanilla, average choices based on what was obvious, straightforward, and needful in the short-term.

I put to you the argument that *none* of what Bush did was intuitive, or obvious, or what a reasonable person would have done in his place. He made choices that fit the agenda of himself and his party-*not* choices, even bad ones, that fit the needs-either short term or long term-of the United States. He acted, from internal motivation. He did not react.

So saying that Gore would have, or should have, been *worse* than Bush, when he's otherwise untested, is illogical. It has no basis in fact, and no reasonability to the argument.

Saying that Gore would have in some way, in the role of President, spurred additional terrorist attacks, is again a fallacious argument, with no basis in fact. Bush's family is an oil family, with close friends in the middle east. His father is the ex-director of the CIA. If you *entirely* discount, erase, and don't draw a single conclusion from George W Bush's Presidency, you're still left with atleast those three *major* motivational ties to the Middle East.

Terrorists didn't attack when Gore was vice President, they attacked when Bush was President.
That gives Gore 4 years of experience serving as second-in-command in an administration that operated under as close as possible, the same political environment as Bush was dealing with. 4 years of learning what to do, what not to do-and what does *not* result in terrorist action against this country.

Gore-as we know-has an interest (however self-aggrandizing you may decide that interest to be) in global warming. And a key to helping stop global warming, scientists seem to agree, is to reduce our dependency on oil (whether it be foreign, domestic, or somehow otherwise). The less oil we need, the less reason we need to involve ourselves, atleast directly as an economical force, in the Middle East. The less directly we involve ourselves in the Middle East, the less motivation for Middle East terrorists to target us, when they can more easily and cheaply target closer and less powerful enemies.

Gore-as we know-served as the Vice-President under Clinton. One of the things Clinton was best known for, was being a supporter of the Black community (and a Jazz musician, for that matter). Hurricane Katrina was a disaster that most affected the poorest citizens of New Orleans-who were mostly Black. This gives atleast some amount of indication that if Gore had been President, he would have had more interest-and more motivation-to aid the citizens of New Orleans (aside from any and all other considerations, one of the centers of Jazz music.).

So there exist publically known, personal motivations for Gore to have functioned-if not better, atleast with stronger conviction-during both the terrorist crisis, and during Hurricane Katrina. Maybe not the strongest ones, but ones that relate to those events.

Ofcourse, the final proof is that Bush *did* act badly when put into a position of power-whereas Gore, as Vice President, did not, in any noticeable way. They otherwise both served as governors, and both had powerful Presidential role-models-Bush, in the form of his father, and Gore, in the form of Clinton.

And my personal feeling is that Bush coming into office was a motivation for 9/11. That it occurred for the same reason that we removed Noriega from office when the Panama Canal was about to change hands-just as we foresaw a harmful administration, and an enemy of the U.S. coming into a position of greatest power in a country important to us, so too did the terrorists foresee a harmful administration, and an enemy of their interests, coming into the position of greatest power, in the U.S.

As annoying as Gore might be (and his wife, even more so), I seriously doubt that he'd have confounded and enraged a bunch of Middle Eastern fanatics to the same degree as the son of the most powerful oil/political/intelligence dynasties in the entire United States (who-did I mention? are close friends with the Saudi Arabian royal family.), especially considering that he and his family have been leading the war effort *in* the Middle East, since atleast 1990.