This American Life - 276: Swing Set

Broadcast on: 29 Oct 2004

Perhaps this question has occurred to you at some point during the last few months. How is it possible that there are people who haven't made up their minds in this election? How is it possible that someone actually hasn't formed an opinion at this point about whether or not they like George Bush? Little children in the most remote villages on earth, children who don't speak our language or know our ways, have opinions about the president. What more information about them could our fellow American citizens possibly need? You know? Well, for months we've been looking into this question here at our radio show and yes there are lots of people who are undecided because they just don't follow the news, they're too busy at their jobs, they're raising kids, they don't care whatever, it's not their thing. I talked to Martha Brennan four months after John Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination but before the convention about what she thought of him. I know he was in the Navy, I know he's a pretty sure he was a Senator and I know he's on thin, and that's about all I know. But lots of people who are undecided do follow the news, do follow politics. Between 2% and 8% of likely voters are still undecided right now depending on whose poll you look at, millions of people, many of them apparently well inform people who are unhappy with the president but just can't bring themselves to embrace John Kerry. They may decide this election and so to understand them better, we've been following a few of them for months now as they tried to decide and we have a scoop, we can tell you how it is they decided. WBEZ Chicago, it's this American life distributed by Public Radio International, I'm Ira Glass, our program today in four acts, two of them about very different undecided voters, one about somebody courting undecided voters and one about somebody trying to sabotage undecided voters and all other voters. That's a story from Jack Hit and we swear it will get you yelling at your radio. Equine, James Hackett is one of those undecided voters who does follow politics, he gets his news from NPR and the Wall Street Journal, plus Atlantic Monthly and Newsweek, he's a doctor in Cincinnati, a diagnostic radiologist, a lifelong Republican, has never voted for a Democrat for president, doesn't want to vote for a Democrat for president. I have voted Republican every single time, mainly because I think they're more fiscally prudent. That's the main reason and that's one of the reasons I'm so upset with Bush, one of many reasons. The Bush tax cut, for instance. If the idea was to stimulate the economy, he says, rich people like him shouldn't have gotten a tax break. If he gives me more money off, it's not going to change my spending pattern at all. I think the amount of these tax cuts, if they are continued, if they're made permanent, is going to be ruined. It's going to be a phenomenal burden for my children and my grandchildren. I feel betrayed in a way and also I feel betrayed because he was promoting himself as a compassionate conservative, which I also really like the sound of and, of course, that's obviously not what we got. Do you want to know everything that I dislike about what Bush has done? It turns out to be a long list. He disagrees with the president about the economy, gay marriage, abortion, healthcare issues, stem cell research. He's alarmed at how the president has alienated our traditional allies and eroded America's

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