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2004 Elections The book Great Decisions 2004 by Crossette, Patricio N. Abinales, Ronald J. Bee, Ronald Tiersky, Bruce Strokes, Peter Hakim, Farhad Kazemi, Augustus R. Norton, Jerrold Keilson who are leading experts in Foreign Policy Association a reader may find it interesting to predict the development in American foreign policies. It is discussed in the book what events are most important for American voters both when it comes to situation in the country and on the world arena. Currently, American government has many issues to deal with.
Most popularized topics today are weapons of mass destructions, Americas involvement in Iraq, relationship between the USA and other countries. In Great Decisions 2004 it is analyzed how these issues will be solved and handled and how our country will sustain its domination and boost its development. Has President Bush's victory in Iraq strengthened his hand in the pending tax-cut battle? Capitol Hill power brokers are debating this huge postwar question as the administration begins to refocus on its domestic agenda. Here at home, Mr. Bush is unquestionably more politically powerful following the fall of Saddam Hussein's bloodthirsty regime.
National security and homeland defense remain Americans foremost concerns. And the president's job approval scores on both issues have soared into the 70 s. Mr. Bush has become a much stronger president today than he was a few months ago (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). The long preparation for war and the war itself had effectively erased the economy from news broadcasts, making it appear less of an issue than it really is. Now, however, with the wars end, the weak economy is roaring back into the forefront.
It is fast becoming the countrys No. 1 issue and Mr. Bush's No. 1 problem. His grades on how he is handling the economy have sunk to the 40 s, an overriding measurement by which his presidency will be judged in the 2004 elections. Last week, all nine of the Democratic presidential contenders spoke from the same playbook, hammering Mr.
Bush on the mounting deficits, a lackluster economy and an increase in layoffs. First-quarter growth numbers will likely be even weaker than previous forecasts perhaps 11 / 2 percent or less giving his opponents evens more ammunition to use against him in the months to come. His tax-cut stimulus plan remained trapped, as of last week, in the crossfire of a House-Senate budget war that made any tax-cutting action unlikely until late spring at best. House Republicans wanted to budget Mr.
Bush's full $ 726 billion tax-cut plan, but were willing to compromise in the $ 500 billion range. The Senate remained about two votes short of that amount because of a handful of uncompromising Republican defectors, including Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. (Great Decisions 2004, 2004) The two said they would not vote for any budget that exceeded the $ 350 billion in tax cuts narrowly approved by the Senate. At this writing, Republican leaders sought to put the Houses and Senates two competing tax-cut numbers in the budget bill, delaying final resolution of the issue until the tax-cut legislation is reported to the Senate floor.
This is where tax-cut supporters hope Mr. Bush will be able to use his political powers of persuasion to talk Mrs. Snowe and Mr. Voinovich into voting for a larger tax cut a cut needed to get this economy moving again.
Mrs. Snowe is an incurably liberal-to-moderate lawmaker who represents a state with a persistently weak economy. She says she is worried about the deficits and fears the tax cuts will worsen them. In truth, she opposes the tax cuts because she wants to spend the money instead (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). Despite holdouts like Mrs. Snowe, however, Mr.
Bush may have some economic elements favorable to him that could turn things around before the elections. With the uncertainty over Iraq behind us, the economy could begin to improve somewhat on its own. After the 1991 Gulf war, stocks shot up by about 20 percent over a three-week period. Oil prices fell by one third.
The dollar strengthened. Saddam's capture will not alter the animosity of some Democrats, nor is it likely to affect the presidential election significantly. In fact, in the Gallup survey only 3 percent responded that they were more likely to vote for Bush after Saddam's surrender. But the reverberations among Democrats in their parochial whir of primary politics did manage to shake some life into the campaigns of Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, while having no visible impact on Deans position as front-runner.
Rather, it is Deans own reaction to events and statements after the fact that is most likely to affect the course of the primary. A CBS News poll conducted on Dec. 16 found 23 percent of likely primary voters supporting Dean a figure unchanged by the nabbing of Saddam with Clark and Lieberman trailing at 10 percent. Kerry, at 4 percent, had fallen behind Al Sharpton at 5 percent. The polls do not identify a Dean weakness among Democrats, but his rivals sensed vulnerability in the former Vermont governor especially after he posited that America was no safer with Saddam in captivity and began to claim he would have supported action in Iraq if permission had been given to the United States by the United Nations. Any future government in Iraq will have to resolve the problem of representation in a government based on population, and most importantly, on territorial representation that will accommodate most major ethnic groups and regional alignments. The overwhelming issue facing a new Iraq is not security per se, nor is it, as others have claimed, the creation of a central government with a standing army.
Whatever happens in this years tax-cut showdown, we already know there is majority support for $ 350 billion in cuts, enough to make all of the presidents 2001 income tax cuts effective this year. And even if that is not passed, the next phase of the 10 -year tax cuts will occur in January 2004 (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). Larger-than-expected job losses over the past three months suggest the economy is weakening further. But close to half of the job decline stemmed from the brutal winter storms that temporarily halted construction projects and badly hurt retail sales, as well as reservists being called up for the war, according to Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, an economic research firm.
Still, this economy is still reeling from several financial setbacks the collapse of the 90 s bubble, the 2001 terrorist attacks, the corporate accounting scandals, and the war in Iraq. It needs Mr. Bush's tax-cut stimulus now more than ever. I think he will get much of what he wants (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). Mr.
Bush is, after all, the president who won most of his tax cuts in 2001 after a bitterly contested election in which he barely won the White House. Surely, following his stunning victories in the 2002 elections and the Iraq war, he has a lot more political capital to win this tax-cut battle, too. In campaign appearances before Democrat special interest groups, all of the candidates seeking the partys 2004 presidential nomination have sharply criticized Mr. Bush's economic policies. They have attacked him for the 2 million jobs lost since 2001, the sharp decline in the stock market, weakening growth and rising budget deficits that could near $ 400 billion next year.
The whole purpose of my presidency will be to create jobs and get this economy moving, said Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic front-runner. Victory in the Iraq war has given Mr. Bush 71 percent job-approval ratings, a level of support that would make him virtually unbeatable in 2004 if it holds up. But former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta thinks the nation's political focus will soon return to bread-and-butter issues on the economy and Mr.
Bush's high poll numbers will fall back to Earth (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). "The president and his advisers ought not to get too comfortable because I think the lesson of George W. Bush's father is still very real, " Mr. Panetta said in an interview. Like his son, President George Bush also won a military victory over Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War that sent his job-approval ratings soaring into the 1990 s. Nearly two years later, however, he lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton, largely as a result of a slumping economy and a 7 percent-plus unemployment rate. The principal focus for the Democrats right now should be on the primary weakness of the Republicans, which is the economy.
That's a deep hole that the Republicans have handled badly. Hammered by a sharp decline in the stock market, the September 11 terrorist attacks, the corporate accounting scandals and economic uncertainty over the war in Iraq, the economy is in the third year of a persistent slump. Layoffs have been rising, unemployment is nearly 6 percent, the manufacturing sector is in a recession and economic growth has been anemic. But Republican strategists said on Tuesday that the end of a successful war to depose Saddam's regime was yielding some economic dividends that could help Mr.
Bush overcome the Democratic attacks, at least in the short term (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). Oil prices have been falling, giving the economy the equivalent of a tax cut (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). Stocks have begun to rally. Consumer confidence is rising and 62 percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the right direction, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Senior administration officials also note that unlike his father, Mr. Bush is making the economy and his stimulus package the major focus in the postwar period leading up to the 2004 elections. He and two dozen other administration officials have begun an aggressive offensive to promote his tax-cut stimulus plan. "They will be speaking for the president's plan at 57 events in 26 states in 40 cities" during the congressional recess, said White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan. The president is being seen working hard on the economy with a stimulus plan to create jobs and boost economic growth, an administration official said (Great Decisions 2004, 2004).
As we may find Bush's positions are quite safe; however still many questions arise when it comes to other specific issues of today. Angry Religious Right leaders wasted no time denouncing the ruling as a threat to heterosexual marriage and American values. They also promised to seek an amendment to the U. S.
Constitution limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Several Religious Right leaders said the issue would define the 2004 elections for them. After the ruling, Bush said he believes marriage should be limited to heterosexual couples, but he has not yet backed a constitutional amendment. Complicating matters is that different versions of an amendment have been circulated. One bans only gay marriage, while another would also ban civil unions and any efforts by state and local governments to extend legal protections to gay or heterosexual couples that chose not to marry. It is unsure that candidate from the Democratic Party will benefit of new view on American values.
For more than a decade, conservatives, led by the Heritage Foundation, have sought to replace the current traditional Medicare, with its defined package of benefits, with a so-called premium support system modeled after the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). In June 2003 the House of Representatives took a major step toward realizing the conservative vision by enacting the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003 (H. R. 1), which adds a long-sought prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Included in H. R. 1 is a provision that would require traditional Medicare to compete with HMOs and other private plans beginning in 2010. H.
R. 1 has gone to a conference committee, which will try to reconcile it with a prescription drug bill enacted by the Senate. The re-election of President Bush and return of Congress to Republican hands could result in the demise of traditional Medicare and a return to an era when the nations elders went without insurance and without healthcare (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). This is clearly a watershed battle. We must continue mobilizing our members and allies to defeat the attack on Medicare and carry this effort into the 2004 elections. Yet Russias relationship with the West is also crucial for counterbalancing China, which is among the reasons why post-Soviet Russia has opted for democracy and capitalism, the hallmarks of the West.
Russia aspires to join the WTO; it is a member of the G- 8, the club of economic heavyweights (though its economy is smaller than the American defense budget); and it has realized that consultation with NATO will offer more benefits than a policy of opposition to its expansion. However, a number of sticking points remain in Russia's relations with the West, and these tensions mean it cannot rely on the West alone to form a counter-weight to Chinese power. The elections 2004 will influence the development of new strategy American foreign politics. Russia will thus defend its Far East by drawing China, Japan and Korea -- rising powers that might otherwise look upon territory in the Far East with rapacious eyes -- into a web of cooperation that creates payoffs and gives important constituencies within these countries a stake in regional peace and in a Russia that is stable and whole (Great Decisions 2004, 2004).
Trade and investment, centering on Russian oil and gas, would launch this regionalism, and Moscow would also seek to tighten the link between the Far East and the rest of Russia by bringing to the region investment from Russian energy companies. In the unlikely event that China were to acquire land and resources of the Russian Far East outright, its power and strategic position would be boosted immeasurably. Any ambitions it might develop to dominate Northeast Asia would then be more feasible, as would its efforts to supplant the United States as the preeminent power in the region (Great Decisions 2004, 2004). To avoid subordination to China, Japan and South Korea might decide to bolster their military might, perhaps even to build nuclear weapons, adding to the instability and risk of war in the region.
Either denouement Chinese preponderance or a regional military buildup aimed at resisting it would make the North Pacific a more dangerous place and one less hospitable to the United States. It is predicted in the book that the United States will continue to increase military power. It is believed that the process of securing Americas power and security Under President Bush Administration will negatively reflect on the economy. Bibliography: Barbara Crossette, Patricio N. Abinales, Ronald J. Bee, Ronald Tiersky, Bruce Strokes, Peter Hakim, Farhad Kazemi, Augustus R.
Norton, Jerrold Keilson. Great Decisions 2004, 2004
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