Change

Soundbyte journalism tends to reduce campaigns to slogans, to reduce candidates and their positions to a theme or mantra. Currently in the 08 campaign we're hearing nothing but "change". It's unfortunate that the campaigns themselves are tussling over who owns the word--"I'm the candidate for change"; "No I'm the candidate for change." It's really boring and reductive.

Let's remember that Bush was all about "change." In a radical departure from traditional American foreign policy, Bush adopted a strategy of "pre-emptive" war, attacking and invading a country just because they might attack us later.

Bush changed 200 years of jurisprudence by wiping out habeas corpus for detainees in Guantanamo.

Bush tried, unsuccessfully, to radically alter Social Security.

Bush changed America from the leading proponent of human rights around the world to one of the worst abusers of human rights around the world.

So I wish the leading candidates would stop pretending that change in and of itself is a good thing. It isn't. I suspect the current talk about change has to do with the general dissatisfaction in the country with Bush, the idea that we need to change from whatever Bush was doing. Unfortunately, the candidates talk about change while at the same time also talking as though they will carry on with Bush's agenda. When reports of US operations in Pakistan came out, the Dem candidates were silent on it, tacitly approving the idea that the US should go into Pakistan unilaterally (something Obama explicitly endorsed last fall).

It would be nice if the candidates and our media would stop making slogans about change, and talk specifically about what kinds of change the country needs.