I'm with the Dean on this one -- The V.P. Debate last night convinced me. I am going with Bush in 2004 (and Perdue in 2006).

Bill Shipp wrote his column this week before the following words were spoken by Sen. Edwards last night during his debate with Vice President Cheney:

"The vice president and president like to talk about their experience on the campaign trail. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Millions have fallen into poverty. Family incomes are down, while the cost of everything is going up. Medical costs are up the highest. . . . We have this mess in Iraq. Mr. Vice President, I don't think the country can take four more years of this kind of experience."

Bill Shipp's column this week is entitled "Don't take a chance on a stranger in elections." Had he known what Sen. Edwards was going to say, he might have taken issue with Sen. Edwards' assessment that the country can't take four more years of the Bush debacle. Debacles, after all, are relative.

Things could have been worse, trust me. Actually, don't trust me, ask Mr. Shipp. As usual, I am relying on what he says. I can't imagine how myself.

Shipp is right. Don't take a chance with strangers.

Marlon Brando's recent death is a reminder. You remember his performance in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." And those words of Blanche Dubois saying "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

And where did this get her? You remember the end when she is being led away to an insane asylum.

Bill Shipp is right one again; don't take chances with strangers, and especially in this election.
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Bill Shipp's column:

Without saying a word, Gov. Sonny Perdue stands as a compelling reason for re-electing George W. Bush president.

Perdue proves an old maxim that voters in national, state or local levels should heed: Don't dump a passable leader whom you know, even one with lots of blemishes, in favor of a leader whom you do not know at all.

On the national level, we know our president, George W. Bush. We know he has made tons of errors, which he is reluctant to admit. We know he led us into a seemingly never-ending war in Iraq. We know the price of oil is going through the roof. We know illegal immigrants are overrunning our country. We know the federal deficit is at a record level. We know our economy is shaky. We know Social Security is in deep trouble. We know terrorists are determined to strike us again, probably because of Bush's policies. We know much more about Bush, nearly all of it bad. To his credit, however, he seems like a really nice guy.

On the other hand, we don't know Sen. John Kerry at all. We don't know how the Democratic challenger would extract us from the Iraq war or hold down oil prices or stem the tide of aliens or save us from terrorists. When we sift through the piles of nuances and modifiers as he answers every question, we can be sure of only one of his promises: He will not be like George W. Bush.

So some of us plan to apply the trusty avoid-strangers rule on Election Day: "If you don't know the candidate, don't vote for him." Not being like the other guy hardly ever justifies supporting a stranger.

We should have tried that approach two years ago.

The validity of the "strangers" rule lays in the vote tallies for Georgia governor on Election Day 2002.

Remember? In 2002 we knew Roy Barnes. We knew he wanted to change the flag. We knew he wanted to build the Northern Arc highway. We knew he wanted to elevate the quality of education and pressure teachers to perform better. We knew he was too eager. We knew a lot of people, including the teachers' unions and the Confederate guys, didn't like him.

We didn't know much about his opponent, Sonny Perdue. We didn't know what he would do about the flag. (He changed it.) We didn't know if he would build the Northern Arc. (He scrapped it.) We didn't know precisely what he intended for education. We only knew that he promised not to be like Roy Barnes, whom he depicted as a large rat. (The rat icon should have been a dead giveaway to Candidate X's personality. Who among us thinks of another decent fellow human as a filthy rat?)

[Now let's not get carried away here Mr. Shipp. The rat climbing atop the Capitol was a very clever, effective ad, and not really a mean-spirited ad, as was the Cleland and Suddam and bin Laden ad. And as you recall, the rat had something on its head that many thought depicted an attitude, a crown, fit for a King.]

So we elected the man whom we did not know.

Only then did we come to know Sonny Perdue, the "I am not Roy" candidate.

In his opening days as governor, Perdue attempted to raise $600 million in new taxes. He forced 73 school districts to increase local taxes by whacking the state's commitment to funding public school grades K-12.

He wrung his hands in despair at the financial plight of Medicaid until a legislative numbers cruncher found that the governor had made a $180 million error in his Medicaid arithmetic.

As the state's economy shows signs of improving this year, Perdue has changed the state's revenue estimate at least four times, giving the legislature an all but impossible task of writing a reasonable budget.
Perdue called a special session of the legislature to deal with a relatively obscure budgetary item, and then told some reporters he could have avoided the session, but he wanted to teach the General Assembly a lesson. That lesson cost taxpayers a bushel.

Perdue included in his state budget a $179 million bookkeeping gimmick (he signed a bill switching a $179 million state payday from one fiscal year into the next). Thus the legislature worked with an annual budget that appeared to include an extra $179 million - but it was an apparition. Gov. Perdue told reporters he never intended to use the gimmick; he just wanted to mess with the legislature. In truth, Wall Street's bond traders warned Perdue that Georgia's credit rating would wilt if the governor insisted on cooking the state's books.

Without any specific rationale, he has taken a meat axe to higher education. He has proposed cuts of more than $410 million to our colleges and universities and another $44 million to technical and adult education.
This governor, whom we did not know, acts like a barbarian within the gates, determined to destroy everything in sight. Layoffs and tuition increases are becoming the order of the day.

Education, once the holy grail of every modern Georgia governor, is suddenly little more than just another state organization awaiting the blade and the wrecking ball.

Sonny Perdue is the main reason I plan to vote for George W. Bush. I don't want to take a chance on electing someone I do not know. I do not know John Kerry. He could turn out to be another Sonny Perdue, but on a much greater scale. That would be a disaster.