| People now say, by a clear majority, that they cannot trust Bush and his administration. Any of us in public office know that people are skeptical about the honesty of politicians. The immediate concern in the papers today has to do with the specific illegal lying that is perjury, but people are equally troubled, I think, by other less direct forms of prevarication. Forrester says he is opposed on principle to embryonic stem cell research. Then he's for it. He tells the NJ pro-life assemblage that he's with them, and then he says he's pro-choice.
In Washington the Republican leadership is saying that it is Katrina that makes it necessary for them to loosen clean air standards, remove Davis-Bacon livable wage protection, introduce school vouchers for religious and private schools, cut student loans by $15 billion (for an average student, that might mean an increase in cost of $5,000), cut Medicaid, cut food stamps, cut child support enforcement. People say to me: "Why don't the Republicans just say 'These are things we don't want to do because we don't believe in them, rather than blaming it on Katrina?'" It's a form of lying that gets in the way of good government. Among all the reasons that I support Jon Corzine (good fiscal sense, attention to higher education, good ideas about innovative economic growth, etc, etc) one thing I like best is that he's straight with the people of New Jersey. |
