A Laid-Back Cheney Makes His Case to Voters

Re “Cheney Takes Race at Staid, Somber Pace,” Oct. 20: Has Vice President Dick Cheney been dipping into the freedom fries again? If he has some evidence that we will all be blown to kingdom come if we don’t vote for him and his court-appointed deputy, let’s hear it. Otherwise we can only think that he is pointing to “freedom on the march” in Iraq as some sort of illustration of their administrative skills and “mission accomplished” as a substitute for grim-death reality.

Ann Steindlberger

Fountain Valley

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Cheney questions John Kerry’s ability to combat nuclear terrorism in a major city. Yet the Bush administration has done nothing to indicate it can do any better. Sept. 11 occurred on their watch. Iraq is a mess. And Cheney himself has said it’s just “a matter of time” before we are hit again. If an attack is inevitable, we need domestic security, emergency services and a noble foreign policy that wins friends rather than creating enemies.

Yet it seems the criticism of Kerry comes down to not being “aggressive enough,” a charge his campaign, sadly, takes head-on, insisting that he will be even more aggressive than President Bush. But aggression isn’t always a predictor of success. Wisdom, timing, good information -- all these are essential in the executive branch, and sorely missing under this administration.

Dan Brezenoff

Long Beach

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Ooooh! The Republicans want to eat your grandchildren, cut off Medicare and destroy Social Security, ending life as we know it. Beware of Bush, the boogeyman. This message brought to you by the folks at the Democratic Party, gulling the elderly and misleading the public for generations.

John Kurt

Reseda

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Re election poll results: What is all this nonsense about the country being deeply divided over the election? The public has never been more together on whom it wants to be president. It wants a rich, white, regular guy with questionable military service who went to Yale. It wants a man who promises to win the war in Iraq without telling how he is going to do this. It wants someone who says he can increase social programs, cut taxes and, at the same time, reduce the national debt.

In short, it wants the Bush/Kerry ticket.

Gary Emery

Los Angeles