http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04301/402166.stmI need to provide some personal history today so you'll know what I'm talking about.
I am virtually a lifelong Republican, partly originating from the fact that my father was one of the few Republicans ever to hold city office in the small, Democratic, Ohio town I come from. My mother was always a Republican poll-watcher.
I cast my first vote for president in 1960, for Richard Nixon, for whom I voted altogether three times. I voted for Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan twice, George H.W. Bush twice, and George W. Bush in 2000. Disgusted by Watergate and vaguely attracted by Jimmy Carter's throw-back, apparent rural cleanliness, I voted for him in 1976, and for Bill Clinton in 1996, repelled by Bob Dole. I generally vote a split ticket and am not an automatic anything, certainly not a Democrat.
As a career diplomat I worked for every American administration from Lyndon Johnson through George W. Bush, serving mostly overseas, in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, carrying out the foreign policy of whatever administration was in power. One does make foreign policy as well as carry it out, but I come from the old school of the U.S. Foreign Service that believes that the American people elect the government in power in Washington, it sets the policy, and you carry it out.
That, as a long prelude to saying that next Tuesday I will vote for John Kerry for president. I will do so with a long, family Republican background because, as a longtime foreign affairs professional I feel that George W. Bush has made an awful mess of U.S. policy.
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