To Whom It May Concern:

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts (St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10/24)uncloaks the shadow side of the consumerism that now grips our politics.No one wants to feel like a fool who’s been had. But I hope thatthose of us who signed on the dotted line for George Bush in 2000 willdecide to cut their losses on November 2nd. In four short but very longyears, the man who slipped into the White House with the help of a rogueSupreme Court decision has nearly wrecked our economy, and ruinedcountless American lives. With his pervasive arrogance, he has shamedour nation before the world, and started a costly war driven bymessianic fervor, power lust, and virtually unchecked greed.

The struggle against terrorism is the last thing Americans should trustBush with. Again today, with the theft of 380 tons of explosivessufficiently potent to detonate a nuclear weapon, which the Bushadministration has known about at least since May, and was warned aboutright after the invasion, Bush and his cabal have proved themselveslethally incompetent not only in their conduct in Iraq, but in the fightagainst terrorism generally, a struggle that Bush’s Iraq disaster hasmade far worse than it was even under Saddam Hussein.

September 11th happened on his “watch.” Instead of safeguarding us, hehas busied himself with demonizing anyone who challenges him,successfully insulating himself, for the moment, from the threat ofimpeachment. Next week the voters face their starkest choice indecades. We desperately need a new face in the Oval Office, to restoreAmerica’s health, prosperity, and dignity. Bush’s people have “workedhard” to smear, and destroy our enthusiasm for John Kerry, as good,decent, courageous a man as we usually see in politics. I too pray, thatthis time we will make a wiser choice than we did four years ago. Onlyour own blind pride and arrogance – and of course the fear Bush has usedour national 9/11 tragedy to keep stoking – could make us want to givethis man another four years.

Jim Harris, Ph.D.