Reason number ten million and one not to vote for Bush: today's NYT carries a story on the science-policies of the administration,

...three NASA scientists and several officials at NASA headquarters and at two agency research centers described how news releases on new global warming studies had been revised by administrators to play down definitiveness or risks. The scientists and officials said other releases had been delayed. "You have to be evenhanded in reporting science results, and it's apparent that there is a tendency for that not to be occurring now," said Dr. James E. Hansen, a climate expert who is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan...

Earlier this year, after continuing complaints that the White House was asking litmus-test questions of nominees for scientific advisory panels, the first question asked of a candidate for a panel on Arctic issues, the candidate said, was: "Do you support the president?"

"Under the Clinton-Gore administration, you did have occasions when Al Gore knew the answer he wanted, and he got annoyed if you presented something that wasn't consistent with that," Dr. Hansen [from NASA] said. "I got a little fed up with him, but it was not institutionalized the way it is now."

Science policy is, generally, not terribly important. But the same flaws that characterize this administration's science policy - a reluctance to listen to experts, an active seeking out of people who will tell the President what he wants to hear, an inability to consider opposing viewpoints - have characterized the foreign and economic policies of the last four years, with disastrous consequences.