An Open Response to Michael Moore's Letter Regarding George Bush

My wife forwarded to me an email sent out by Michael Moore containing his latest complaints about the President. For those who haven't seen it, I will attach it here as a comment. After having read it, I felt compelled to respond. Here is what I sent to Mr. Moore.

Dear Mr. Moore,

I just received your open letter to “All Who Voted for George W. Bush,” and I find it to be very interesting -- though far from objective -- reading. I do not object to the content of the letter, despite the fact that I am a registered Republican and despite the fact that I do, generally, support the President and, more importantly, the Presidency.

I do, however, object to the fact that you paint with such a wide brush and with such broad strokes that you color everyone whom you deem to be “the enemy” with the same shade of ugly. Not everyone who is a Republican, or who is a Bush supporter, is evil, heartless or intellectually challenged, despite the conclusions upon which your letter appears to be premised.

I will be happy to engage you in an intelligent discussion of ideas if you believe that you can put aside your self-affixed labels of Democrat/liberal/fill-in-your-choice-of-left-wing-buzz-words-here. I am not, however, willing to engage in an exchange of ad hominem attacks.

That’s the problem with political debate in this country these days. Too many people instantly pigeon-hole “Republicans” in one slot and “Democrats” in another. The fact is that those pigeon-holes do not come close to describing the people who actually call themselves Republicans and Democrats.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Republicans, just like Democrats, are human beings. I mention this only because your incessant attacks on Republicans seem bent on dehumanizing them. But Republicans and conservatives, just like Democrats and liberals, have families, feelings, and beliefs. They also have ideas and opinions that they are convinced are true. Their beliefs and ideas may differ from yours, but that doesn’t mean that they are wrong and you are right. It just means that their opinions are different from yours.

With that in mind, I want to address the questions and concerns you raise in your letter. Before I do so, however, let me give you a little background about me so that you can, perhaps, understand my frame of reference.

I am a Republican. I am also pro-choice. Were I to run for office, I would run on the Republican ticket but would also fight to remove the plank in the Republican platform that advocates abolishing a woman’s right to choose.

I believe in God, and in Jesus, but I don’t believe in forcing my beliefs down other people’s throats. I subscribe to George Carlin’s philosophy that religion is like a lift in your shoe. You should use it if it makes you feel better, but you shouldn’t try to nail your lifts to the natives’ feet.

I favor stem cell research and I back Federal funding of appropriate projects in this area. I also believe that the Federal government should spend more on AIDS research and less on building highways in the wilderness.

I believe in the right to bear arms, but I also believe in gun control. If I want to own a Luger, I should be able to do so. However, I should also be required to have appropriate safety devices on that gun and I should be required to have a license and to pass an annual test in its use and handling. I should not, however, be free to own an AK-47 simply because I want one.

I believe in a human being’s ability to make a better life for himself or herself without having to rely on the government for a handout. I also accept the fact that there are instances and circumstances in which the government should step in and help those who cannot help themselves. The government -- both state and Federal -- must be in a position to provide such things as unemployment benefits, disability benefits, and health care benefits for those who need them.

I also believe that certain programs, such as unemployment benefits, must have conditions and time limits on them such that those who receive the benefits are nevertheless encouraged to get off the public dole. There is no honor in collecting unemployment benefits. I do not believe that it is the government’s role to pay those who simply do not want to work (and, let’s be honest -- there are people out there who fit this description. In your heart of hearts, you certainly must realize that there are actually some people who collect government benefits because they don’t want to work. I know, because I’ve met them. I’m not saying it’s the majority of people; I’m just pointing out that there are some people who actually do believe this.)

I supported the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 because it was the appropriate response to what happened to this country on September 11, 2001. I was initially non-committal on the subsequent invasion of Iraq because, even with the intelligence that the administration claimed to have at the time, I was skeptical about the notion that Iraq posed an active and immediate threat to the United States. Nevertheless, once the troops went in, I was behind them because there should never be a repeat in this country of what happened to our soldiers who served in Viet Nam.

Was it the right thing to send the troops into Iraq? At the time, I was willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt. However, I believed at the time (and still believe) that a better use of the troops we sent into Iraq would have been to put them all on the ground in Afghanistan in order to capture bin Laden in an attempt to behead the al Qaeda monster once and for all. Now, I am convinced that going into Iraq was, and has been, an exercise in futility and a waste of time and resources.

That, however, does not change my support for Bush, because I am not convinced that Gore would have been the right man for the job after September 11, and I do not believe that Kerry had any exit strategy that would clean up the mess in Iraq. (As an aside, had Kerry actually posed a viable exit strategy for Iraq, it might have won him the election.) Yes, I do acknowledge that Iraq is a mess and that we should be out of there as soon as possible, especially in light of recent events in this country. I cannot support continuing to spend millions of dollars to rebuild Iraq when that money would be better spent rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

With all that being said, let’s get to your letter. You raise legitimate concerns about Michael Brown, the FEMA director (who has already resigned). But let’s not pretend (as you seem to do) that Brown was the first political hack appointed to a position based more on who he knew than what he knew. Brown is only one of many such appointees in this administration. And let’s be candid: Clinton did it. Bush I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt -- they all did it too. These political appointments are rewards for folks who helped, in one way or another, get the President elected and, 99 times out of 100, these appointments simply fly under the radar because they are “business-as-usual.”

Were it not for Katrina, Brown’s appointment would have flown under the radar as well, just as most of the political appointments that came before it did. It’s a disgrace that such appointments happen. It’s also a fact of life that this is the way our system works. If you have a solution to this particular problem that would cover all political appointments by either party, I would be happy to hear it.

You raise concerns about Michael Chertoff, alleging that he has “little experience in national security.” The problem with your complaint is that there is no way to assess the appropriate experience level for the Director of Homeland Security. Where does one gain experience in dealing with terror cells and preparing for and thwarting an endless variety of threats to our borders? As you well know, the Department of Homeland Security is less than four years old. It would seem to me that the best qualifications for the Director of this nascent department would be intelligence, an ability to think on one’s feet, and a willingness and ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Chertoff, a former US Attorney and judge, would seem to have these qualities. I would, however, be happy to hear what you believe are the necessary qualifications for the Director.

You claim that we are “the laughing stock of the world[.]” I am curious as to your source for this claim. My wife works for an international company and, while there is some curiosity on the part of her colleagues from overseas about the choices this country makes, I do not get the impression that the United States is seen as a “laughing stock” by anyone.

The danger of your use of the inflammatory phrase “laughing stock” (apart from the fact that it has no factual support), is that those who accept your word at face value will believe it to be gospel. It is one thing to make a point and support it with facts. It is entirely different to make a statement, claim it is a fact, and invite people to rely on it without supporting the statement with any evidence of its truth. It is your kind of “argument” that has reduced the political discourse in this country to the war of unsubstantiated sound bites it has become.

You attack the President and McCain and “their rich pals” for “stuffing themselves with cake” when the hurricane hit. I’m not sure what your point in this particular attack is, except as a fairly weak attempt to analogize the President to Marie Antoinette. I absolutely agree that the President should have been far more responsive. I’ll direct you to my own blog for my thoughts on this, and I’d like you to notice the difference between your complaints and mine. I actually propose workable solutions that could have, and should have, been employed. You do nothing but rail against the President without posing a single answer to the problems of which you complain. Surely you are familiar with the old adage that it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

You complain about “horrible poverty,” a poor education system and a lack of health care benefits for millions, yet you fail to present a single suggestion to help remedy the situation or to pose a single solution to any problem. Worse, you disingenously attempt to pin the blame for all of these problems on Bush when you surely know that there is no causal relationship between Bush in the White House and the existence of the problems you highlight. Certainly you realize that much of the problem with our education system lies at the feet of the local boards of education, many of which believe that something as basic as memorizing the multiplication tables is no longer necessary and that phonetic spelling is an acceptable alternative to learning the rules of the English language.

In addition, poverty and the problems with our health care system have existed in this country for decades. Don’t forget that during President Clinton’s first two years in office, with a Democratic controlled Congress, poverty did not end and the health care crisis worsened. In fact, the biggest change resulting from Clinton’s first two year’s in office was the return of a Republican majority to both the House and the Senate. Volumes have been written on why this happened, but the point is this -- poverty continued to exist and the health care system continued to deteriorate despite the presence of a person whom I am sure you would consider a “good man” in the White House. While it would be nice if the President could wave a wand to cure all of our social ills, we both know that solutions to these problems are far beyond the ability of any one man, or one woman, to solve on his or her own.

I don’t pretend to have solutions to all of these problems. However, I also don’t pretend that the cause of all of these problems is “Democrats” or some other target at which I may wish to spew bile. Demonizing the President does not solve them, nor does assessing blame without posing solutions.

You ask if I “really feel safe.” My answer is: “yes.” I feel safe, albeit not because of any particular thing that the President has or has not done. I feel safe because of the fact that we, as a people, are more fully aware now that there are active and very real threats to us out there, and that those threats know no border. Knowledge is, after all, power. I also feel safer because I believe that the government is aware of those threats and is better prepared -- although far from fully prepared -- to deal with them.

Does Katrina show that we are unprepared for such threats? Not at all. Katrina shows that the administration dropped the ball when it came to preparing for and responding to a natural disaster the likes of which had never before been seen in this country. It is a horrible tragedy that the disaster occurred at all, and it is shameful that the Federal government (as well as the state and local governments) obviously botched the response. The Federal government’s painfully slow response, however, is not an indictment of this country’s overall level of preparedness to face threats from beyond its borders, or of its ability to right itself and recover from a disaster.

Is George W. Bush the greatest president we’ve ever had? Not even close. Let’s just say he’s among the twenty-two presidents that make the top twenty possible. But, given the choices we’ve had over the past two elections, I’m glad that he was the president on September 11, 2001 (the seven-minute delay notwithstanding) because I believe that the initial response and focus of this country in the wake of those attacks was correct and appropriate, and he was the architect and voice of that initial response.

You claim that Bush was not “up for the job.” I’m not certain that any person would have been up for the job that confronted the Presidency after September 11, 2001. While I part ways with the President on many things, given the choices we had, I cannot say that I would rather have anyone else in the White House, either on September 11, 2001 or today.

You say in your letter that you “have an idea” on how to fix things. I look forward to hearing it.

Very truly yours,


David P. Kendall