Posted by Joe: As we get closer to my birthday, which just happens to be Election Day, the race between President Bush and Senator Kerry is getting tighter. It is about time.



Over the few weeks leading into last Thursday's presidential debate, I was becoming increasingly flabbergasted with the laborious and unenergetic way Mr. Kerry was running his campaign. Then the clock struck 9 p.m. on the last day of September, touching off the beeping stopwatch in the Senator's brain that was long overdue.



Mr. Kerry was poignant, articulate and poised, three words that even the most staunch Bush supporters can admit will never be used to describe our president. While I do not believe Mr. Kerry won the debate by as wide a margin as many experts have said, I would say he won decisively enough to ensure one thing: this race will be close.



Before Tuesday's vice-presidential debate between Vice President Cheney and Senator Edwards, I watched a C-Span special on each candidate's debating style. I became increasingly fearful that Mr. Cheney would "bitchslap" Edwards like a father who had just caught his son smoking a marijuana cigarette. In the past, Cheney's boring, dull, tone somehow came out as crisp, and Edwards seemed confined when he had to debate from a table, as he would have to against the vice president.



But Mr. Edwards held his own against the vice president, responding to Mr. Cheney's vicious attacks against his senate attendance record by ripping off a list of legislation that Cheney had voted against, such as the Department of Education, a national holiday to honor Martin Luther King, and a Meals on Wheels program for senior citizens. This was not exactly a highlight of the policy discussion, but it was a highlight of another sort: the spunk of Mr. Edwards.



The polls conducted after these two debates have taught us one crucial thing: the citizens of the United States are slowly getting their act together. The race is close enough that it could go either way. But that is not good enough. This election is about many things; the economy, healthcare, and social security are three of them. But in a post 9/11 United States, Senators Kerry and Edwards have to ensure the public that they will protect the country from terrorism. They have less than a month to pound one critical point home: the war in Iraq has not made this country safer.



Obviously, Saddam Hussein not being in power is a good thing. But with new evidence emerging every day about the lack of evidence about weapons of mass destruction and new news every day about the lack of a definitive plan to get us out of Iraq, Saddam's ouster has not positively altered potential threats to our homeland. In fact, it may have negatively altered the potential of more terrorism. More people might despise us, if that is even possible.



Less than four weeks remain in this campaign, which is probably the most important in this country in more than 70 years. What we face is the possibility of four more years of an administration that has misled us, misled our potential allies, and isolated ourselves in situations that called for coalitions. And that is just the administration's foreign policy.



You want to know how bad Mr. Bush has handled the economy? Monday, a group of 150 tenured professors from some of this country's top business schools (have you ever heard of a place in Massachusetts called Harvard?) sent a letter to the president, bashing his tax cuts and saying that our country's "economic policy has taken a very dangerous turn." It continues, "Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office." So it is not just Iraq.



As he accepted his party's nomination in Boston on July 29, Mr. Kerry said, "We are here tonight because we love our country. We are proud of what America is and what it can become."



Anybody who says they could become proud about what America can become under the Bush administration knows nothing about what has happened the last four years. Please, we cannot take four more.