Presidential Candidates Bush And Gore Essay, Research Paper
Albert Gore is the 45th vice president of the United States. He was educated at Harvard University and Vanderbilt University Law school. In 1977, Gore was elected to the office of US representative from Tennessee. After seven years he became the state’s US senator. He lost the election in 1988 when running for presidency. Apparently he won several primaries but his campaign appeared to be unfocused and unorganized. In 1993 he was nominated as Bill Clinton’s running mate for that presidential election.
He also became Clinton’s close confidant, while also helping develop some of his own areas of concern such as down sizing the government and developing urban establishments and fighting global warming. This ticket helped him gain the office of vice President of the US which he has held for two consecutive terms. There were charges against him that claimed he was illegally raising money from his office in the white house but charges were later dropped after he was investigated by the justice department.
George W. Bush is the 46th Governor of the state of Texas and a republican nominee for the United States. His is now in his second term as governor. He earned enough representatives to became a republican nominee during march 14, 2000. While serving three Texas Legislative sessions, Governor bush worked with statewide leaders and members of the Texas Legislature to help provide reforms that would put welfare recipients to work, improve public education and strengthen the criminal justice system. He has also served on the boards of various charitable, business, and civic organizations.
Bush’s main focus is improving education by increasing the share of funds from the state, developing more choices of schools, and to expand educational opportunities. Like Bush, Gore also has strong leadership goals in terms of education, he has made strong efforts to come up with strategies that can help improve public education, and goals that need to be met, such as reducing class sizes, and increasing technology in the classrooms.
But then again there are many differences between presidential Bush and Gore besides the fact that one is republican and the other is a democratic. While Bush wants to spend the surplus on tax cuts and private investment accounts to replace Social Security, Gore wants the surplus to be used mostly for reducing the national debt, or helping with the big retirement programs for the future or even for the improvement of schools.
Although Gore personally does oppose to abortion, he does support the women’s right to choose because he believes that abortions cannot be prevented, but they can only become a problem for legal system if it was to be outlawed by the federal government. As senator Al Gore cosponsored the Freedom of Choice Act to prevent these rights from being limited from the states. He also fought to ensure that Medicaid recipients who are victims of rape or incest should have the right to abortion services.
While Bush is also against abortions he wants to make a constitutional demand to ban abortions and makes no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. He also supports the republican party’s anti-abortion stand. The national republican platform states: “‘The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.’” (Frank Bruni, The New York Times, January 23, 2000).”
Gore presented a variety of gun-control measures that he supports which includes raising the age for handgun possession from 18 to 21; excluding juveniles from possessing assault weapons; putting new penalties for adults who sell guns to minors; and requiring safety locks on guns. He also encouraged the congress to pass the legislation to help keep guns out of schools. The Gun-Free Schools Act, also has helped to keep dangerous children out of schools because it requires that all states receive federal education funds and adopt policies that require a mandatory one year expulsion for any students who bring guns to school.
Bush has previously spoken against government- demanded gun registration and says that it would be impractical to enforce mandatory child safety locks on firearms. He has been criticized by Democrats and Gore as being soft on gun control. “I believe innocent people, law-abiding citizens, ought to be allowed to own a gun. I believe they ought to be allowed to hunt and protect themselves,” he said. Basically he emphasizes that certain people should be allowed to own guns if they wish to for the use of self-defense, if it is necessary.
Gore’s plan to strengthen social security benefits for elderly and disadvantaged is by continuing to balance the budget, paying down the national debt and using the interest savings from debt reduction to help with the Social Security Trust Fund. These achievements can help reduce poverty among single elderly women as well as discontinuing the limits on the amount of social security that older Americans can earn. He does not want taxes to become a threat to senior citizens who especially need money to purchase the drug prescriptions. He also thinks that taxes
ought to be cut for the middle class in ways that can benefit social security and Medicare as well as in other domestic areas such as schools.
Bush’s proposal suggest that he can strengthen social security and appeal to younger people at the same time. He says that by enabling younger workers to put 15 percent of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts, this will ensure that all senior citizens will receive all the benefits they expect from social security. This plan allows the younger workers to put a part of their payroll taxes into their personal retirement accounts.
Supposedly Al gore’s main pitfall is exaggeration and one example on this is when he claimed that the Bush Social Security Plan Would Spend $1 Trillion that is needed to pay benefits. While analysis confirms George Bush’s plan sets aside 2.4 trillion dollars to strengthen Social Security. There’s also been a lot of complaints on him on the issues of pollution. The mining operations under land covered by the Gore have been cited to be heavily polluted. Several times this year Tennessee Water Quality Control Act of 1977 had been violated for a number of reasons. First an unacceptable amount of wastewater had escaped because of a failure in the “pump age line” and then later on their because the zinc level of the water had exceeded the allowable level.
On the positive side Gore has worked hard to strengthen our economy while also protecting the environment. He has fought to increase community policing, institute tougher punishment, and ensure smarter crime prevention in the neighborhoods. He encourages commitment from parents, teachers, and all our schools to do a better job teaching the fundamentals so that we will be able to raise standards for all children. His first focus begins with the classrooms and I agree with this because like he says that is where all the learning takes place and where it begins. That’s why reducing class sizes is a really big issue that needs to be dealt with more efficiently. His efforts promise to help provide choices that can help us and extend our prosperity in ways that enrich all of the people.
A lot of questions of George Bush’s past remain unanswered as he makes little efforts to give us major details about his past simply claiming ” I do not have a perfect record as a youth. When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things.” He has had a lot of issues in the past with drinking and apparently he also had issues with drinking and driving. There’s also new evidence that claims that he possibly might have lied about his drunk driving conviction in may of 1976. He claimed that the DWI charge had been resolved the same night that it occurred but a Boston Globe story says that he did mention the DWI charge the day that he was in court. Well whatever the truth maybe I don’t really think it really is any of our business because the fact is, this incident occurred a very long time ago. If he is lying to cover up the truth about his past, then he must have a very good reason to, and obviously he does not want other people in his personal business.
Governor Bush has worked to make his Republican base stronger and reach out to his independent voters. He has also served as a compassionate conservative and has made efforts to shape his policy based on taking personal responsibility, making strong families, and taking local control. He’s a Methodist and has worked to increase faith in church groups and charities. Governor Bush’s first priority is improving education and he has promised to reform public schools, as of course Texas is proof of this achievement and goal because it is one of the two states that have made the most recent progress in education. He has also come up with a new Social Security Plan that should be able to benefit both of the elderly as well as the young. Although there has been great debate between Bush and Gore and the whole Social Security issue, I think Bush’s plan seems promising in the long run. Since Bush has helped make the most progress in Texas as their Governor than anywhere else. But many say that he has made his appeal to all different types of groups. They say that Bush has common sense approach to problems and that he will be the type of President who can bring Republicans, Democrats and Independents together. He makes his appeal to young workers because he believes they should be trusted enough to invest some of their payroll tax for their own retirement, he appeals to seniors because he wants them to have a better Medicare system, and he will see fit that they have more control over their own health care. He appeals to the charities and churches in America because he supports them and wants to make these communities stronger. Most importantly he appeals to families and communities because he wants to help them live their lives better.
While Bush emphasizes the importance of improving education and schools, Gore really does the same the only difference is that Gore shows greater concern over issues concerning violence in schools. Which right now is a really big problem in our society, since the columbine tragedy he insist that we need to address the problem with school violence. That’s why I would say he does make his appeal more strongly to parents who really care about these matters and want something to be done. I think he definitely appeals more to Hispanics than Bush does not only because he has more Hispanic voters but also because we believe that democratic party appeals more to us and that Gore as a democratic president can help us achieve goals that a republican president can’t. Gore can help us develop programs to enforce bilingual classes in school and enforce principles that are humanitarian and essential to us Latinos.
Gore ’s presidential campaign organization is aiming to raise at least 20 to 25 million last year. This year he claims that by signing bipartisan legislation this will help shore up campaign spending. He says that by reforming legislation, this would bring focus on reducing spending in campaigns for the United States Senate. It had been reported that Gore’s campaign account balance is $8.3 million even though he is expecting another 1.3 million in federal matching funds. Bush spent $4.9 million last month, and this spending total to $83 million which is a new mark for presidential campaigns. A lot of that money also went to advertising. Although they both have different methods for money, I think Bush’s campaign is more effective as far as raising funds because Gore had spent $40.7 million but only $28 million of the total fell under the $40.5 million spending cap.
The elections are on Tuesday and a lot of things are at stake the way I see it. There is the issue on whether abortion will remain as a constitutional right for women, there is the issue on how the government will expand health care and education, and there is the issue on whether senior citizens will retire in comfort or in poverty. Even though Both candidates promise to provide prescription drug care for the elderly, Bush’s plan would only cover the poorest of the retirees. Gore’s proposal is somewhat more expensive but it would at least cover up all the retirees who signed up for it.
I had promised myself that I would vote this year, however that is probably not going to happen because I am not a new jersey resident and since I live on campus and I have classes on election day, there is no way I will make it back to the New York on time to vote. But if I was to vote, I would definitely vote for Gore without a doubt. For me the democratic party provides me the most hope for my future and for the Hispanics in this country. The democratic party shows more concern over poverty and low income families. Plus I feel that Gore can help expand and develop organizations dedicated to Hispanics and help support bilingual education in our schools.
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