By Isaac Ericson '01

By the time that this article is printed in The Scroll, the presidential election will be over. The Deerfield community will know who our next president will be, Al Gore or George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter who wins. What we will see from either Mr. Gore or Mr. Bush will, ultimately, be the same. Now, before the Letters to the Editor pile in, please understand that this article is not written out of apathy towards politics. It is, however, written with disgust of the deregulated and privatized America that both candidates are endorsing.

Both candidates support the death penalty, NAFTA, the WTO, an increase in the Pentagon's budget, and neither is for universal health care in the near future.

Many Democrats will argue that there are many issues that differentiate the candidates and that Mr. Gore is clearly the right choice for them.

"For 24 years, I have never backed down or given up on the environment, and I never will in my whole life!" Mr. Gore stated before he boasted: "I'll stack my record against anyone."

While Mr. Bush's Texas leads the nation in health risks from major air pollutants, total emissions of toxic chemicals, release of toxic chemicals into the air, underground injection of toxic chemicals, cancer hazard from manufacturing facilities, and production of animal waste, Mr. Gore has little to stand on besides his inflated rhetoric.

He continues to criticize the fossil fuel industry and nuclear industry, but he has done little to challenge them. The Clinton/Gore presidency has given no fuel efficiency standards and has essentially come up short concerning virtually everything including forests, pesticides, and land erosion. If the outcome is the same, does it really matter that Mr. Gore actually knows about global warming or that Mr. Bush justifies the destructive ways he has supported on the grounds of industrial growth?

When the Democrats bring up the issue of appointing Supreme Court justices, they don't want to recognize the fact that one of the most progressive civil libertarians in the current court was actually appointed by George Bush, Sr. This argument for judicial legislation would seem more admirable if the horrendous Clinton/Gore leadership hadn't overseen the intensification of the nightmare that existed under Reagan/Bush. While there were 37 million Americans who did not have health care in the '80s, there are now 45 million. Reagan ruled in a time when one million Americans were in prison. Now, over two million Americans are in jail, nearly half of which are ironically in prison, as political commentator Michael Moore has pointed out, because they "participated in an activity that both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have admitted to doing themselves."

When you consider the economy, would Mr. Bush have done anything different with the creation of NAFTA or the WTO? Both candidates agree on NAFTA and the WTO and, subsequently, are putting the interests of huge corporations ahead of consumers and workers. Would you expect anything else from the two hereditary politicians who are bidding for docile and hereditary votes in a campaign financed by private companies?

Reading Emily Brill's editorial in the October 4th edition of The Scroll, I found it difficult to be anything but confused with her argument. It is true that Mr. Bush has made some grammatical errors, but that editorial seemed to be almost pushing for something as arbitrary as having the candidates take the SAT over again and comparing scores. This is not supporting Mr. Bush, but it is an attempt to get such Democrats to consider what exactly causes them to support Mr. Gore and praise Mr. Clinton. When considering the gutting of welfare, the bombing of Sudan, and the renting out of the White House to fat cats, Mother Jones magazine has justifiably claimed that if Clinton "were a Republican, liberals would have been appalled."

Despite all of the tired rhetoric we have heard from both candidates, it is discouraging to report that this campaign will primarily be a waste of the money big business has invested in it, as both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush have agreed to allow government to be taken over by it. One can't help but think that we could have been spared by a Gore/Bush ticket.

As published in the November 8, 2000 issue of The Deerfield Scroll, the monthly newspaper of Deerfield Academy.