I found a page that sums up the perceptions of both sides pretty well. It's rather bland, but, a summary of how the two sides perceive things.
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/html/new_10_21_04.html
This isn't character assassination by the way, it's just what people supporting Bush tend to perceive because of his conduct after 911 which they deemed strong. I don't know, halo effect or whatever you call it, the strength of his leadership then, ensured him a stronger following than he would ever have had otherwise.
But it's interesting to see how Bush supporters responded to their view of how the world viewed Bush's actions. It kind of confirms what people have said elsewhere, that there are very few people elsewhere than in the states who support his reelection. If you believe he's the one, then that's your right, but you do need to know that the choice is important beyond our boundaries and that it is saying something to the rest of the world and not necessarily the 'tough on terrorism' thing that you think.

The only term that was being questioned was "effeminate" as it didn't seem urbane to the discussion. Plus, I get nervous about hearing Arnold call Democrats who won't pass his budget "Girlie-men" but it was funny in context.
I guess as a woman, I would find that almost comforting for at least one of those guys to have feminine qualities of compassion for those less fortunate who would much rather pay for their health insurance if it were affordable to the common mortal rather than leaving that up to corporations.

I chuckle as much as anyone watching Kerry go out and bag a goose hunting to show that he's a gun owner and hunts.

I just wouldn't want anyone who's thinking of not bothering to vote, to give up the ship at this point, regardless of who you think is the one, how can we look ourselves in the face with the Aghanis voting if we don't bother to do it?

There is another interesting footnote to this election stuff, aside from the global turmoil that Bush has made. Whoever gets elected will likely get to appoint 3 new members to The Supreme Court. Seeing as how Bush wants to change The Constitution (especially over a matter that I think is not terribly important for such drastic measures to be taken...) I'm willing to give Kerry a shot at deciding on those who will make the law of the land. Alas, I guess I'm that "L" word, too.

And, now really, what exactly is 'effeminate' about Edwards? I didn't understand that observation at all!

Oh, now, am I the only girl here man enough to admit I'm a liberal and spell it out? L-I-B-E-R-A-L. Fjohn may think it's a dirty word, but I don't. I'm proud of who I am and what I think.

I doubt you'd ever see Fjohn calling himself "The C word" in order not to anger we liberals. And I promise, I'd never call Fjohn "The C word" either, but mostly just because he might be HIGHLY offended if he took it wrong. I may disagree (rabidly) with Fjohn's opinions in this thread (and many others), but I respect him because he owns himself. And I think Fjohn is a lot more likely to respect me, the bleeding heart liberal, if I just come out and say it like it is.

Next Tuesday Fjohn and I will vote for different people. Two ends of the same horse. I think I'll probably still talk to him though, even if he is a conservative.

Liberal? Conservative? That's not what this election is about.

I don't knock anyone for being Conservative. Conservative values are respectable values, even those of them that I personally don't share -- and I do share many of them.

But a vote for Bush is patently not a vote for Conservative values. A vote for Bush is a vote for widening the gap between rich and poor, for passing the bills for current laziness to future generations, for permitting the accelerating deterioration of the environment.

Bush is a clever man. But he is frankly poor at analytical reasoning, which is just one of the tools a leader needs, but an important one. He also has an alarming ability to make facts that don't support his position invisible. That alone makes him someone who ought not to be trusted with the leadership of this country. And the last four years have borne this out.

It is telling that people in professions that require them to continually master new facts and accurately identify the truth overwhelmingly support Kerry in this election: lawyers, journalists, librarians, etc. Of the educated professions, the only ones which similarly unite behind Bush are the ones dominated by money concerns: bankers, accountants, CEOs.

There is nothing wrong with vigorously pursuing personal gain; but I think it is immoral to set personal gain over human life, over clean air and water for our children, over concern for truth, over the common good.

What I can't understand is how anybody can choose to elect a person who has now been proved beyond doubt to have lied to the very people who elected him. It's all very well to talk about the war on terror and decisiveness and all that, but that point still stands out. Bush lied to the world at large. That, should be the end of it.

Uh-huh, and Bill Clinton lied about not having "relations" with a certain person, under oath even, and too many people still consider him to be a great president. Blagh!

I knew as soon as I posted that that it would come back to haunt me in that manner. No, I can't compare the two in the way you suggest. I don't believe President Bush lied.

Quote:

---

I don't want to attack you personally, but I find that comparison deeply shocking. Deeply shocking and, what's more, deeply immoral.

---

Oh, but you did anyway.

Right. I think when bush blames kerry as a flip flopper, hes trying to blind ppl to the fact that many bills are thousands of pages longs, and are very complex. I heard a local tv ad saying "So-and-so voted AGAINST creating jobs" Give me a break. I don't think anyone would vote against creating jobs, so one would have to think it was just a tad more complicated than that. Sometimes the bill may seem to be good, but it may end up hurting more than helping. Kerry realizes there are shades of gray, as opposed to bush childishly thinking everything is black and white.

Please try to keep it calm, don't forget this isn't supposed to be Controversial Issues revisited. Thanks.

Someone on the radio (sorry but NPR is probably flaming liberal enough for you, but I'll say it, as I don't have any other talk radio on in the car) recently said something that made a lot of sense to me, but it may not to you. I guess I've worked for a few corporate bosses like Bush so that's why I think he acts this way.
He acts with his guts and what he feels is right. He bases his judgements on instincts rather than knowledge. Many bosses at a higher level do this, they leave the fact finding to others and then make judgements based on their instincts of what they feel is right. And actually, if the person is surrounded with wise counsel, this style might work as well as another. The gut style can work IF advisors are actually working for common good. But the end consequence is when they start forgetting reality. Some of them, and if you've worked for someone like this, you'll see it, are deluded into thinking they know what is right for others, and they act on their guts. This works for some leaders, mind you, but this time...the people surrounding the leader were not acting in the interests of the common good. Plus those gut reactions on the part of Bush, were also motivated by his family background and his father's reluctance to take Sadaam out. If Bush had been Joe Smith, I don't think there's a chance of a snowball in hell of us having gone into Iraq like he did, without backup..without a little more caution. Some actions perhaps, but not the way he did it.
I give him credit for being a leader in times of trouble, but, he lost the credibility entirely when he decided to use this trust to fulfill a goal of his and chalk it up to international terrorism.
An instinctive person acts like this. In a corporation, it can mean layoffs, or decisions that are not grounded in reality. Or hiring too many managerial staff at high salaries then not hiring enough support staff to help get things done.
Or, as I believe has happened, surrounding oneself with yes men, or yes women as the case may be. As far as I could see, there wasn't any little boy in that crowd to tell the Emporer he was naked, but the rest of the crowd was telling Bush he was the best and the brightest. Haven't you noticed how he avoided being in touch with the public who hadn't been questioned for their loyalty?

Now, Kerry tends to amass information and make his judgement on that basis. He's more on the walking encyclopedia side, which probably annoys the hell out of people. However this has its usefulness, I thought his comments when Bush called him on 'forgetting our allies and you're denigrating their contribution' were pertinent, that there were more people serving from Missouri than all the allies combined. He probably knew this was coming, but, he went ahead and put that in his memory bank.
If he were the original Star Trek captain, he'd be more of a Spock than a Captain Kirk. And I understand how annoying Spock can be to some people. This is why a Spock character works well on a team.

But the problem is this, when Bush isolates himself from people other than his advisors who basically believe in him and this team takes him out of everyday reality, then he risks losing grip with it.
Some corporate bosses are capable of making decisions wisely, then they isolate themselves with people who are yes men or women, then they begin thinking that everything they think is right. They tend to make big mistakes.

I see parallels with Bush and religious leaders too, because how many times has he proclaimed his faith in God and his guidance? I don't even have a problem with someone's faith guiding them, but I do when it is a leader of a group and behind him are a group of folks feeding into that notion that he's right, he's the best, and he's the most capable person of knowing what is right for us.

Once again, the study I put a link to above, and I apologize for doing it as I generally don't like to, but, it's not a bad one. It shows what people on both sides responded and proposes a reason why.
The one most important thing is that, people around the world are massively wondering how Americans could vote for Bush. This is not the entire world having been brainwashed or hit on the head either. This is countries around the entire world. These are not politicians but citizens of other countries who were supporting us in our hour of need, until they saw that war was going to be waged whether anyone else decided it or not.
These are seniors, these are young people, these are middle aged people of all walks of life. These are people who belong to fraternal groups that are pro American.

So no, for once, the choice isn't the same.

How are people responding though, if they really can't vote for Kerry?
I've heard of those folks who were Bush voters last time who are refusing to vote in the presidential vote, but voting in others locally.
That's about the only option I've heard about for people who can't vote for Kerry, and I can understand people who do this, but, they cannot vote for Bush in all honesty because of his actions to justify the war in Iraq.

Veterans have a real dilemma, and I know plenty of them. On the one hand, Bush didn't have to go to Viet Nam, nor did Cheney, yet they're keen to send others to Iraq. No matter whether you believe he was AWOL or whatever, Bush didn't serve abroad. Kerry on the other hand did, despite any efforts to prove his actions were less than honorable, he was there and it serves little purpose seeing how deep his wounds were. However he protested against the way the war was being waged. If I were a vet, I'd wonder what to do. The veterans I speak to do too. Well, they must do what they think is best. Vote for the one who served and then tried to change the way the war was waged, or the one who got into the guard, was not overzealous in his attendance, and then, asks his countrymen to serve him abroad for a cause that is not justified. Many people are worried that it is disloyal to those serving during a war to vote against the person leading it. But, as the war was justified on shaky premises, how can a vote for someone else to lead be disloyal to those serving? If our trust was based on false information, then, doesn't our trust deserve to be placed elsewhere? We do not denigrate our military for doing their job as best they can, we simply say, the situation requires someone else to lead us out of the mess.

Reports are coming in that US military personnel, who should get counted first and foremost as they are the ones who deserve to express themselves the most, have not received their ballots in time to be properly counted. That makes me mad.
I don't care who they vote for, but they of ALL people should be counted first. Their lives are on the line after all.

If Bush is a corporate boss type, who is an instinctive leader and has made decisions that adversely affect the good of the corporation, then normally the stockholders would vote him out, wouldn't they? Well, I don't have an MBA but he does, from Harvard. Certainly he should realize this, and he would have long ago, if he weren't surrouned by advisors who lead him to believe too much in himself.

I was responding to Shrivats comment

Quote:

---

What I can't understand is how anybody can choose to elect a person who has now been proved beyond doubt to have lied to the very people who elected him.

---

when I said Clinton lied, under oath, about adultery, yet many feel he's still the greatest. see here

Please note #14. I feel that adultery is just as wrong as well. That's where I'm coming from.

Quote:

---

So I hope I can be forgiven for assuming that you were blithely, brazenly comparing Clinton's wriggling under scrutiny with Bush's lethal dishonesty

---

Sure

And yet, no one voted for Clinton again after it having been proved he lied. Of course, he was on his second term, but the point is, American voters did not put into office a person who was proved to lie.

I'm never sure about shades of grey in morality. I think things are either moral or immoral and immoral things are probably usually on a pretty good par with each other. But my morality isn't based on any religious precepts. It's pretty simple. Don't hurt other people. From my eyes, killing someone to save yourself is still immoral. You had a reason, it is defensible, but still immoral. So you can see how I might find the actions of both President Bush and President Clinton to be immoral.

However, I honestly do not think the immorality associated with adultery has much to do with presidency. Many people believe FDR to be among the greatest presidents, and he was adulterous. JFK and Jefferson, too. Being adulterous doesn't have much bearing on effective presidency. But I think most people would agree. It was Clinton's lies that did him in. However, he lied about adultery, which again, doesn't have much bearing on effective presidency. If Bush lied, which I personally think he did, but it's not easy to pick out the truths from the half-truths from the outright lies on both sides, then his lies really do have everything to do with being harmful to our nation and its people, and whether or not he is an effective president.

Also like to point out that Nixon probably did plenty of lying, but I think his effectiveness as president, especially in the foreign affairs department, both during and after his term, are pretty hard to argue. In the end, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that probably most politicians lie, and many are still quite effective at what they do. Its just up to us to determine how their lies effect us and how much of it we'll stand for.

What I was actually trying to bring out was the impact of Bush's lie/half-truth on the way in which America is perceived in the world. Whatever Clinton might have done, the fact remains that it really didn't have an international effect, while the Iraq War definitely has. George Bush is internationally, the most disliked U.S. president ever. I think, and forgive me if you do not agree with me on this, that the way in which Bush is perceived has actually had a negative effect on the safety of America as a whole. When you have a President who, to an Inernational viewer is really little more than an object of scorn and hate, then it is a logical conclusion that the reputation of the country of which that person is President will also be tarnished.

Ok, Ok, I give up. Obviously you don't have a problem with adultery and lying under oath. An act, by the way, that cost the American Tax-Payers over $30M for the Starr Investigation alone.

Please note that I said:

Quote:

---

I knew as soon as I posted that that it would come back to haunt me in that manner. No, I can't compare the two in the way you suggest.

---

Be that as it may, this thread was about undecided-voters and I apologize for getting this off track. May the best man win.

You have a good point ClaraSue, perhaps we can get back on track.

Undecided voters can help future elections have three strong viewpoints, not just the present two, by helping to build up a strong third party in America. Many voters may not be aware that Abraham Lincoln was a third party candidate (the Whigs and Democrats were the dominant parties at that time). I personally am supporting Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate. He will be on the ballot in 48 states.

I will be voting Tuesday.
We have seen a continual increase in Terrorist attacks on our country over the last several years. Marine barracks, American Embassy, the Cole, and more, with no effective strike back. On 9/11 we as a nation realized we had to take a different approach, and we have. George W Bush just happened to be at the helm when this happened. He did exactly what I think he should have. I believe we were very lucky to have this man when it hit the fan. No one can say they do not know where George W stands.

Why would we swap a proven leader for an unknown?
I am a registered Democrat And I will be placing my mark on George W Bush.
Jax

True, but, if this were a situation with a corporate boss, the stockholders would not have allowed the person to stay on this long. They'd bring in an outsider and stick him in there pronto. I use the corporate analogy because George W. Bush represents that world.

Here's a new statistic I saw today:

"In case this statistical anomaly slipped past, since 1936 the last Redskins home game prior to Election Day has predicted the winner. When Washington triumphs, so does the incumbent party in the White House. The Redskins lose, they're out. Seventeen straight elections, the stat has held true."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6378171/

And guess what? The Redskins lost.

But there are a bunch of other statistics... Like my one professor who has successfully predicted the popular vote since 1946 using his model (no polls, he uses things like economy and such to determine the winner). His model has Bush winning 52% of the popular vote.

So what do we know? Come Nov. 3 (hopefully!), half of these statistics will be wrong.

Remember...this has been a "curse-breaking" year...remember the Red Sox down 3-0 to the Yanks...they won...so anything can happen!! Go Bush!

Apparently, in the past 100 years Democrats have always won the White House when the Red Sox won the World Series.

Ok, so it happened twice so far in history...!

(1912 and 1916, I believe...)

Ah Americans, I perceive you are all too superstitious.

Don't try to vote alone with a baby, though. I tried to pull that this morning and they kept saying I had to have someone else hold her because it would be "easier." I said I was perfectly capable of touching the screen with one hand, and would likely have used only one hand even without the baby. They then told me she might throw up on the machine.