THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2004

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2004

Our View

Our choice

President Bush will alw ays have the affection of the

American people for standing stalwart in the most dev- - astating attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. At the head of a government caught massively by surprise after years of ignoring radical Islamic terrorism, Bush rallied his forces and moved expeditiously to gird homeland defense and destroy the Taliban who had sheltered the headquarters of this world movement. We and millions of other Americans commended him.

He said in the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks that the priority of his administration would be the war on terror, but it has not. The president indulged himself first in a massive tax cut, a core Republican issue, when the costs of national preparedness and global war meant astronomical increases in the deficit.

The tax cut has not turned around the economy and it is an economy as much injured by the war in Iraq as by the Sept. 11 attacks. It needed the Bush team’s leadership and imagination to get us out of the doldrums and that has been lacking.

His administration hurriedly passed a series of measures— the Patriot Act—which have not been shown to be effective, but that have put almost unacceptable restrictions on Americans. The Bush administration has sequestered hundreds without trial or explanation both here and abroad and has proposed dubious military tribunals to try suspects virtually in secret and without representation. In a sense, many of these acts undercut the very nature of the democracy we are trying to defend.

His idea to invade Iraq, preemptive war, he called it, has gone awry. In the haste of the administration to get support for the war without real domestic or international debate, the administration failed to plan how to carry out the peace. Now 19 months after the invasion, young Americans are dying almost everyday trying to stabilize a country with decades of turmoil behind it and no leadership of its own.

Mr. Bush has had four years to show how he will lead tjlis country. He has failed to meet the test of leadership.

The tasks that lie ahead for our next president combine formidable challenges with severely constrained resources that will require the best leadership we can get. The challenges we face—whether it is how to restore fiscal responsibility to a government overwhelmed by debt and bleeding revenue; how to maintain the financial viability of the Social Security System which provides the sole source of income for many seniors; how to rein in the costs of prescription drugs that force too many Americans to choose between medication and other necessities of life; or how to, ensure the basic promises of a democratic society pf civil liberties, the right to privacy, equality of justice, separation of church and state, and keeping our word under our international treaties—these challenges cannot and will not be met by simply hailing the mission as accomplished or saying that freedom is on the march or we are staying the course.