Bush missed chance at debate

Editor:

Maybe W needs to lose. At the final debate the first question, relating to the flu vaccine shortage, was openly partisan and designed to catch the president off guard, to embarrass him. He could have made hash of not only the moderator but that liberal clown at the other podium.

The response should have been, instead of, "Aw, shucks, mumble, mumble," something to this effect: "Well, Bob, even though that quesion is designed to embarrass my administration in a blatanly partisan way, I'll respond. But, I must first point out that this question should have been given my opponent and his constituency, the trial lawyers. It is because of decades of Democratic Party anti-business and the virulent anti-drug company policies that it has become almost impossible for our nation to produce medicines; vaccines in particular. It is their record of excoriating the drug companies and the FDA for moving too slowly to approve new drugs, and then turning around when the process is speeded up to sue those same companies into bankruptcy for percieved or imagined damages. It should be noted that these suits, in which trial lawyers end up being the only ones paid, are paying for my opponent's campaign. I must point out that the shortage, regardless of how bad it is, could have been much worse. The country affected was Britain; like our neighbors the Canadians, they have high standards of medicine. Although I'm not allowed to ask my opponent a question, the American people should remember it is the Democrats who have put our drug companies on the ropes and it is the Democrats who want to fix that by importing drugs from overseas. The American people have a right to know from Senator Kerry, 'What happens when the time comes and we cannot make our own drugs at all, and the contamination takes place, not in Britain, but in some filthy third-world drug lab?"

That would have trapped the cat in the canary cage.

Dave Stewart Sr.

Grovetown