RIGHT, LEFT & NONE OF THE ABOVE

...If you want narrow dogma, how about the plight of a major political party in which being prolife disqualifies you from seeking national office because special interests forbid it...

...It was already evident that an invasion would squander the support of most of our allies and risk the precarious gains we had made in the war on terror...

...And I cannot, in conscience, cooperate in the permanent corruption of our moral life—particularly at the hands of a professed Catholic...

...Because despite the decency, fairness, and generosity of our people, America has never been more feared and despised in the world than it is today...

...Yet barring any political earthquakes between now and November, I will vote with no little enthusiasm for George W. Bush and a whole raft of other Republican candidates...

...I myself will not go to the mat for a stronger immigration policy or faith-based initiatives or No Child Left Behind...

...And while I accept that, alas, man is by nature a political animal, I have always thought that you really have to be some kind of dumb to expect much of, identify with, or invest yourself wholly in any political party, including the Republicans...

...This failed at both ends: they abandoned their own principles and got nothing in return...

...The Democrats' enslavement to special interests and consequent inability to run prolife candidates for high office is doing deep harm both to their own party and to the nation...

...They are important, and other things being equal, might even be decisive in certain times and circumstances...

...By contrast, Tony Blair was eloquent, just short of Churchillian, in the run-up to the Iraq war...

...To judge by their recent presidential questionnaire, our bishops imply that the minimum wage, farm policy, low-cost housing, and other such issues are crucial...

...It is especially difficult to square his support for the Iraq resolution with his vote against a similar grant of authority in the Kuwait war, which involved a legitimate exercise of power to uphold international law and which, accordingly, "Why, of course 1 want voter input—just tell see what you want to hear...

...It has often been said that Catholics have no political home in America: the Republicans are hard-hearted toward the poor and the Democrats callous about innocent life...

...Anyone who knows him and the commission's work also knows that he thinks deeply and is far from dogmatic—too far for me, in some cases...

...RIGHT, LEFT & NONE OF THE ABOVE Three voters make up their minds Robert Royal t the dual risk of being a prig and a bore, let me begin with what the scholastics called the via remotionis (crudely: what something is not...

...I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party...

...For me, an abortion society is the moral equivalent of a slave-holding society and maybe worse: at least slave masters did not kill over a million slaves every year...

...In the Catholic ghetto where I grew up, I never laid eyes on a known Republican until I was in high school...

...My enthusiasm, to continue just a little more in the same philosophical direction, is not primarily about Bush...

...Indeed, we are more divided, more vulnerable, and more impoverished...

...But it does not take much insight to see that the administration has occasionally let the tiller slip and has had to fumble to get a grip again...

...Bush knows the words, but can't carry the tune...

...Because the United States has now proclaimed a new foreign policy, the Bush Doctrine, which embraces a theory of "preemptive war," even when the United States has not been threatened with attack, as in the case of Iraq...

...John Kerry was not my first choice to be the nominee of the Democratic Party...

...My son-in-law is a Marine lieu-tenant in Fallujah and his e-mails to me (yes, this is our first instant e-mail war) express disgust with domestic media coverage of the Iraq conflict, which he thinks is going far better than most Americans realize...

...Robert Royal is president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C...

...Thomas Higgins W by am I supporting John Kerry...

...But there are actually some diversity of opinion among Republicans and real debate at the level of nation-al politics...

...Since then, the White House has done a remarkable job in getting the economy back on track...

...I do not know any other way to characterize their clumsy efforts to buy senior votes with drug benefits and Hispanic votes with virtual amnesty for illegals...

...I hope this is right...

...Yet they—Karl Rove prominently among them, I believe—have sold off various parts of the conservative patrimony not for a mess of pottage, but for an empty pot...

...The shameful treatment of the late Bob Casey at the 1992 Democratic convention inaugurated an ideological chokehold on the party that keeps many of us, who might otherwise look at a Democratic candidate—occasionally, in theory, in fear and trembling—from ever doing so...

...My friend Leon Kass, who heads the president's bioethics commission, for instance, has been wrongly characterized as a tool of Republican sectarians...

...Because as a nation we are less equal, less prosperous, and less secure than we were just four years ago...

...They did a bit better in finally getting rid of tariffs on foreign steel, but only after dithering back and forth in the hope of placating steel workers in Pennsylvania and other swing states...

...ENGLEMAN More seriously, the Bush administration seems to have faltered at what I expected would be its strong suit: steadiness and competence...

...The major media outlets often say that the Republicans are hostage to a narrow "theological" minority on abortion, embryonic stem cells, gay marriage, and various other issues...

...John Kerry could potentially nominate four proabortion justices, which would establish abortion through the lifetimes of my children and future grandchildren, and probably for-ever...

...So when all is said and done, I'll vote Republican because President Bush, I believe, won't appoint Supreme Court justices who will further entrench Roe v. Wade in our dear land...

...His book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History (Crossroad) is soon to be reissued in paperback...

...So, while I support and largely agree with Bush, I admit his manner can come across as brittle...

...This is something of a political cartoon, but it expresses enough truth to make us reflect...

...His down-home Texas routine is more foreign to me than Kerry's tony Swiss schooling (though I've grown to appreciate its prickly charm, especially given Kerry's lumbering blandness...

...And there are other Bush advisers who have plenty of experience and know-how about Washing-ton politics...

...My own real enthusiasm in this election, I will confess, is that the Republicans are not Democrats, but not entirely...

...I supported and still support the decision to go into Iraq...

...Because future generations of Americans are now saddled with budget deficits so crippling, their opportunities for financial security are gravely imperiled...

...Mostly, I vote against abortion these days because I think that this one practice has coarsened our national life and deadened our finer human sentiments as nothing else in my lifetime...

...While this is not altogether the fault of George W. Bush, no other individual bears greater responsibility...

...Dick Cheney, media portraits aside, is one of the few real adults I have met in Washington, and a truly likable man...

...BALOO Commonweal 13 October 8, 2004...

...Still, I would not make up A Commonweal 1 2 October 8, 2004 my mind in this election on most economic questions...

...A quick digression: if Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq, then Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Jacques Chirac, Gerhart Schroeder, Vladimir Putin, Hosni Mubarak, the King of Jordan, and various lesser lights did the same—you can look it up...

...I don't understand much about economics, for example, but so far as I can make out from the charts, the recent recession began toward the end of the Clinton administration, continued into the first year of Bush's presidency, then took a deep dive with the stock market after 9/11...

...But despite all efforts, he somehow seems unable to communicate deep moral passion, which I have no doubt he feels...

...Yet Kerry made his choice, and his subsequent explanations for that vote have been wanting both in clarity and consistency...

...Like his father, Bush is a thoroughly decent person...

...And then there's the war...

...Enough was known at the time about the intentions of the Bush ad-ministration to warrant a refusal to grant them the authority to invade Iraq...

...But I cannot say that I think the administration has done a first-rate job in managing the postwar situation...

...The president will probably earn little credit for taking the bad hand he was dealt and playing the cards rather well, but his basic policies, such as tax cuts, are the right ones, I believe...

...He wasn't even my second choice, primarily because of his confusing stance on the war...

...On the whole, I prefer the Republican approach to many problems...

...A Kerry administration would be far worse, disastrous in fact, but I expected more steadiness from this White House...

...But other things are not equal...