The 9/12 President

What I would truly like to see out of John Kerry is for him to take some time in this last debate and explain, in a gracious but firm manner, exactly why people shouldn't - can't - vote for George W. Bush. It's something that people understand, I think, but need to have expressed ...

Remember 9/12? Not 9/11, with its shock and sadness and anger, but the day after, when the dust began to clear and the shock began to subside and we began to wonder "what do we do now?" I looked to President Bush, as we all did, because he was who we had - not simply for direction, but for leadership.

It was an historic moment, the likes of which we hadn't seen in over 50 years ... the kind of moment when America could have shaken off the torpor that accompanies peace and prosperity and assumed once again the mantle of its greatness. We were ready to join together, to sacrifice together, to work together, to put aside our divisions and reach as one, to lead the world, toward a higher purpose. Out of the ashes of that tragedy came the opportunity not just to heal and unify ourselves, but to lead the world in a real effort to defeat a great evil. And I was ready to follow George W. Bush.

How did we get from there to here? At home, we are now more deeply divided than we ever were before. Abroad, our credibility has been destroyed by deceptions about WMDs, our ability to lead compromised by arrogance and bullying, and our moral standing squandered by apparatchiks intent on winning battles by undermining the very principles we're fighting for.

Think about that for a moment ... try to remember where you were on 9/12, and think about what could have been done with that. More than any President since Roosevelt, George Bush had the opportunity to lead us together into greatness. But he is simply too small a man to even understand such an opportunity, much less to grasp it. Instead, he told us to go shopping, and used that moment to grab control of the Senate, squelch political dissent, and push through more regressive tax cuts.

And now that moment is irretrievably lost ...

and that's is why George Bush does not deserve to be President.

Please say it, John.