The 2000 presidential election could prove to be the closest race since the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960.  The CNN, USA Today, Gallup Poles as of October 23, 2000, have the candidates neck and neck.  Bush is holding at 46% and Gore is at 44% with a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.  There can be no question with numbers this close it could turn out to be either candidates White House.  Trying to decide whom to vote for in this election may seem extremely difficult but only on the surface.  In fact, choosing a candidate becomes quite easy when you study the issues.  In this election six major issues seem to emerge.  They are the economy, education reform, foreign policy, gun control, protection of the environment and securing first amendment rights.  Make no mistake that Bush and Gore have extremely different opinions on these issues.  For these reasons, Americans must completely and without any hesitation endorse Al Gore for President of the United States.

Very few citizens of the United States could say that we were better off economically eight years ago than we are today.  During the Presidential debate on October 17, 2000, Al Gore remarked while pointing to Bush:  “If you want to go back to the policies of the 80’s then here is your man.  If you want to continue the current growth, then I am your man.”  Under a Gore administration, this country will face an economic surplus in addition to paying down the national deficit. Gore will save Social Security from privatization and provide health care to those who cannot afford it (Gore).  The Bush budget proposal will probably lead to another recession.  According to an analysis of this proposal, Bush exceeds the projected surplus by 1.1 trillion dollars (Gore).  If the surplus did not materialize for some reason, then it is obvious that a recession will follow in a Republican White House.  A recession and increasing deficit would destroy the progress this county has made over the last eight years.  Economically, we cannot afford George W. Bush as president.

Gore's education package will create new jobs and strengthen the public school systems in America, and Bush will have public schools move from the education business to the advertising business.  Al Gore is looking to increase signing bonuses for teachers to ten thousand dollars.  He also wants to see 100,000 new teachers hired over the next ten years to reduce class size, and he announced during the third Presidential debate a sensible plan for school accountability.  If a school fails to meet standards, it will be closed and reopened under a new intense management team the next day to revamp the school (Gore).  This is the same plan that Governor Jim Hunt-D of North Carolina uses.  On the other hand, Bush wants to close the school and allow parents to put their children in private schools through the use of vouchers (Bush).  This is not the answer.  Vouchers provide tuition assistance for private schools to parents, and  I believe they would dilute the education system and force public schools to compete with private schools.  Education should not become commercialized at student's expense.  The public schools should be given all the support they need to succeed instead of fear tactics in case they do not, and Gore's plan does a better job of this.

With the Middle East on the brink of war, this country needs a person of experience as their president.  Al Gore has been the Vice President for eight years and has served on the President's National Security Council.  He has also served in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. George W. Bush has been the Governor of Texas.  In fact, in his first debate Bush opened saying:  “I am not of Washington.”  More than ever in a critical time like this, America needs someone who is of Washington and knows foreign policy.  Bush did not seem to have a firm grasp on world policies during the debates.  For example in his second debate, Bush feels that pulling American troops from the NATO operation in the Balkans is the right thing to do.  Gore believes that pulling these troops would undermine NATO and again destabilize that region.  A laissez faire attitude about the Middle East now will not protect our national interests in the future.

Gun control laws need to be tougher.  According to Al Gore's web site, he wants to create a new picture identification for gun owners in addition to what he calls a three day “cooling down” period before you can purchase a handgun.  This could be called the driver's license of hand guns.  In his debate on October 11, 2000, Gore said he would do nothing to infringe on citizens privilege to have guns.  In order to clarify, gun ownership is not a right.  The Second Amendment does not give private citizens the right to have guns.  It gives “A well regulated Militia” that right, and in 1939 the US Supreme Court defined a Militia as the National Guard and not the private citizen in U.S. v. Miller.  On the other hand, Bush stated in the same debate that local police should just enforce current laws, and the federal government should not get involved.  This is another of Bush's laissez faire approaches, because the government should create some sort of standards for everyone.  When children start to kill each other in schools, it is definitely time for the government to get involved.

The candidate that wins this election will directly impact the environment of the future.  Al Gore has dubbed this decade as the “Environment Decade”.   In his second debate Gore stated:  “In the twenty-first century we will see the effects of global warming.”  He has a vision for reducing the effects of global warming and protecting our environment for future generations.  In his web site, Gore tells of a plan to offer tax incentives to manufacturers of cleaner burning products to reduce our dependency of environmentally harmful fossil fuels.  On the extreme opposite is George W. Bush.  In the same debate, he claimed that he did not know what the cause of global warming was and also stated that the protection of the environment should be at the local level.  With Texas number one in industrial pollution and toxic air releases, it is clear where Bush stands on local level control (Gore).

The new President will also shape the definition of our First Amendment rights.  Looking at the ages of the current US Supreme Court Justices, anyone can see that over the next four to eight years three or more of the justices could retire.  The new president will choose their replacements.  Under Gore we can expect to see liberal justices that interpret the Constitution as a document that grows with the times, as he stated in his first debate.  Bush will certainly appoint more conservative members to the high court that will strictly interpret the Constitution.  To give an example of the impact, Bush said in his first debate that abortions should become scarce, and he disapproves of the new abortion pill along with a woman's right to choose.  However, Gore stated he was extremely pro choice.  If Bush becomes President and appoints three or four new Supreme Court Justices, the right to choose (on many levels) could become a thing of the past if the court were to reinterpret decisions like Roe v. Wade.

The issues here are just the tip of the iceberg in the game of politics.  They will be argued and shifted around for years to come.  In the context of the present, Al Gore is the most suitable choice for president to carry us forward into the next millennium.  On October 21, 2000, I had already cast my vote for him.  Between now and November 7, I hope you do too.