CALLER: It’s not that I… I think that he’s very articulate but I think he gets lost in his words.
RUSH: Nah, he’s just —
CALLER: I think he gets lost in what he says. Wait a minute, Rush.
RUSH: Wait a minute. Then how do you — if he gets lost in his words, regardless of how articulate he is — how do you know what he’s saying? How do you know what he wants to do?
CALLER: I think when he sits down with people that — like he was very good in the Senate. People love him in the Senate [sic] —
RUSH: They don’t.
CALLER: They do.
RUSH: They don’t.
CALLER: They do love him in the Senate.
RUSH: He is not a popular man in Washington, and this is something that’s been known for the longest time, and it’s one of the things that was first discussed —
CALLER: Well, you know, they said a lot of people weren’t popular —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — because people are not popular because you’re dealing with people who have a different opinion and then they think you’re just, you know, nuts, you’re not all that popular with a surrounding group.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: They didn’t think Ted Kennedy wasn’t too popular after Chappaquiddick
RUSH: No, but I mean… No, when you’re not liked in Washington and you’re a Democrat it says something. Democrats own and run that town, and Kerry has not been that popular. He’s not been that liked. Forget “popular.” He’s not liked. I want to go back to something you said a moment ago, because you really said something that’s entirely accurate and something I have tried to explain in great detail on this program over the years and that is you said that Kerry and Bush “both good men. They both want the best for this country.”
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: I think that’s true of liberals, I think liberals want the best for the country. I think conservatives do, too.
CALLER: I think any —
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! But the big argument is how you do it, and that’s where I think the arguments always involve how you do it, and that’s where people like me believe the liberals, while their intentions may be honorable —
CALLER: Well, let me ask you a question.
RUSH: — their results are going to be disastrous, and have been.
CALLER: Do you think, do you honestly think that when the — whoever becomes president, no matter who the man is or woman is, that becomes president, that they really make the decision in that Oval Office? They have a sleeeeew of people that they talk things over with and they get all these inputs, and those are the people that really make the decisions, and the president just signs his name to a piece of paper.
RUSH: (Stifling laughter.)
CALLER: He doesn’t make the decision all on his own.
RUSH: See, see, now this is where you’ve got to be very careful here because you are already, even though you support Kerry you’re calling in and say, “It doesn’t matter who the president is because the president is just a figurehead.” I disagree profoundly when you get the right man. I think Kerry would be a figurehead.
CALLER: I think Bush is.
RUSH: See, that’s where you people on the left are so wrong about Bush. There’s one guy running the federal government: it’s George W. Bush. You don’t see any defections. You don’t see people leaving. You’re going to see turnover the second term. Ronald Reagan ran the federal government, the parts of it that presidents can. Presidents can’t do much about 
the state department. They’re career appointed people in these little agencies that go around doing their own business but presidents do bring big, visionary ideas to Washington — if they’re good. A lot of presidents haven’t been any good. They don’t have any ideas. They just want the job because it’s the best thing to have on their r?sum?, but good presidents who have agendas, who have ideas move those agendas. That’s why they’re good. That’s why people vote for them because they’re able to articulate what their vision is. That’s why Kerry is failing miserably, nobody knows what he wants to do. Nobody even knows why he wants to be president! He can’t even answer that question.
CALLER: I — I don’t agree — I don’t agree with you there. I think he can answer it. I think he’s just —
RUSH: Would you tell me what it is? If you’ve heard it, would you tell me why he wants to be president? Because I haven’t heard him say it.
CALLER: Because —
RUSH: All he can say is, “Bush is horrible.”
CALLER: No, I don’t — I don’t think he’s ever said that.
RUSH: Wha…? Wha…? (Clapping.)
CALLER: But I do think that he wants to be president because he thinks that he can do a better job than George Bush.
RUSH: He just… I mean, the forged documents at CBS? You don’t think he said that Bush has done a horrible job?
CALLER: I don’t think Bush has done a horrible job.
RUSH: No, I’m saying that’s the only reason Kerry has given for running for White House is that Bush is horrible. Kerry can’t tell us why he wants to be president, other than, you know, he wants his own house.
CALLER: He’s running for the White House because that is the American way, that after so many — four years, we have to have somebody run against them, and to me, maybe it should be a six-year term —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — and then a four-year term or something like that, so the men that — or women that are in the White House, when they make mistakes, which we did make a mistake. We shoulda never went there. Let’s face it —
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about, Clinton and North Korea?
CALLER: I-raq. I-raq. We shoulda never went there. We shoulda never went there, under those premis-izz. We should have waited —
RUSH: Let me ask you this.
CALLER: — more support.
RUSH: If we put your plan into action and Bush is president for six years, how you gonna deal with that?
CALLER: Tree.
RUSH: What?
CALLER: I said, “It’s like we’re the English, when they came and they tried to take America. They took half of Ireland —
RUSH: You’re still talking about Iraq.
CALLER: — they took Scotland. I mean, we can’t go into a country, and we can’t go in and blow them off the face of the earth and just say to them —
RUSH: We didn’t.
CALLER: — “The next time you come to our soil we’re going to do it all over again.”
RUSH: We didn’t. Some people think we should have, but we didn’t. I don’t know. You are illustrating something, though, that is highly interesting. You’re demonstrating a very highly attuned opinion about Iraq with a total lack of understanding what it’s about. I think this is emblematic of much of the liberal Democrat thinking out there. It’s not really “thinking;” it comes from your emotions. You’re comparing us to empire, like Britain, and that’s not what this is about. There is a vision behind this move to Iraq, and either people have taken the time to understand it and then agree or disagree with it, but if you don’t even know what the vision is, you’re not going to understand why we are there, and even if you want to say it was a mistake, “We shouldn’t have been there,” the question now is, “What’s best to do about it, and who’s best qualified to deal with it?”
I don’t happen to think it was a mistake. But time will tell. But the bottom line is that there is a New World Order out there that we are facing. It’s the equivalent of World War III and its focal point is that part of the world, and the vision is to create, if possible, a pro-American 
Arab nation that is not predisposed to educating its kids to hating this country and growing up to be terrorists, to show them that as human beings they can best prosper in freedom so that that can be demonstrated to people who are being denied that opportunity by dictatorial regimes over in that part of the world. It’s a great vision and I don’t understand why liberal Democrats are so opposed to spreading freedom. I really don’t. It’s something that just I cannot quite understand, because every liberal is all concerned about civil rights, and human rights.
You have people over there who die simply because they look at an official the wrong way! There are mass graves. There were torture and rape rooms, and we still have signs saying that “Bush = Hitler.” None of it makes any intellectual sense, so it’s gotta come from some deep emotional fear, powerlessness or whatever. But regardless, there is somebody who understands the threat that we face and is willing to face it head on — and John Kerry isn’t, and this is one of the reasons — people slowly coming to realize this, and that’s why he’s fading and dropping so fast in the — in the polls. You know, most Americans believe in the concept of American exceptionalism, e-x-c-e-p-t, exceptional. We are a cut above, not because we’re better people. We’re the most powerful count on earth because we’re the freest. There is an American exceptionalism and too much of the left in this country denies it and in fact considers it to be the problem in the world.
“We’re too big! We’re too powerful. We’re too free. We threaten. We provoke. It’s not fair,” whatever it is they come up with to assuage their guilt over it all, and the problem is they run for office to get elected and do something about it. So they give the North Koreans nuclear weapons! — and then they run around and ignore terrorists all through the nineties when they had the opportunity to catch ’em, and the world gets more dangerous, and then people like Madeleine Albright run around and say, “Well, that’s fair, because it’s unfair the world should fear us.” It’s just cockeyed. It’s absolutely cockeyed, because it’s all rooted in the fact that somehow the left in this country doesn’t see the basic decency and greatness of this country. They see only areas of this country that they want to blame first for the rest of the world’s problems, and it’s epitomized by this silly notion that Bush is a terrorist and Saddam wasn’t! It makes no intellectual sense. Anyway quick time-out. I’m glad you called out there, Pat. I’m honored that you listen to the program each and every day.
END TRANSCRIPT
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