The Iowa caucus is coming up on Thursday and I have yet to really make a decision, although I am looking forward to it perhaps a bit too much (and I'm the kind of guy that likes to stick around after the voting is done to work on the party platform). The only bad part about this is that I basically can't watch any TV at all in the next few days without seeing Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, and sometimes Romney staring at me with their vacant, corrupt TV eyes in 30-second commercials. What a worthless thing, the campaign commercial. Is it even remotely possible to take them seriously? What kind of person is seriously swayed by them? Worthless.
As a result of this I've been getting into arguments with several different people, including my father, about the reasons to vote for a particular candidate. I've always had somewhat of a disdain (the more I look at it, misplaced), for people who choose to vote for their candidates based on who is most likely to be elected rather than who they most like/agree with. My dad's policy is always to vote for the Democrat he thinks can beat the Republicans. This seems to me to be everything that is wrong with American politics in a nutshell: it becomes more about winning the horse race and less about the issues as time goes on. It ends with us electing supposedly "down to earth" people that in actuality have no clue about how to be president, but boy, I could certainly drink a beer with him.
(Speaking of which, isn't Bush a former alcoholic? I would assume that means he's not allowed to touch alcohol, ever. So much for the "have a beer with" voting contingency, assuming it exists.)
In a perfect democracy, people would vote for who they thought was the best candidate. Not who they thought was most popular, not who they think will do the least amount of evil, certainly not the one with the most sanctimonious fucking commercials. It would put everyone on a level playing field and reduce the amount of fierce, completely unreasonable partisanship that grips both sides to an absurd degree. It would also allow third party candidates to have a fighting chance, which I think would be a nice change. I get angry at people who scoff at the few who voted for Nader in 2000 on the basis that he cost Gore a few thousand votes. If you think Nader is the best person to run for office, that's who you should vote for. If not, don't. But at least think about it.
I was originally planning on caucusing for Kucinich, basically because I took several online quizzes comparing my policy views with the candidates and Kucinich was my closest match in nearly all of them. For a while, this seemed to me to be the way to best gauge who I think would be the best president. Now I'm not so sure. I don't buy his UFO sightings, for one. For another, I think he has much of a plan regarding the war in Iraq (it makes Richardson look deep). But how to reconcile the fact that I agree with Kucinich on nearly everything while still being unsure of his qualifications? One of my favorite bloggers, Mightygodking, said something very useful on the subject:
"Yes, Kucinich agrees with me on certain positions, but you know who agrees with me on every position? Me! And yet, I would likely make a terrible President. Competency in the duties of the job itself is just as important as having the right agenda, and Kucinich just doesn’t have that competency."
Exactly, I figure. I was wrong to equate his stance on social issues with his ability to be, you know, diplomatic and reasonable. So I apologize, sort of.
Now I'm thinking I'm going to throw my support around Obama or Edwards, most likely Obama. They both seem pretty good to me, especially in comparison to Clinton, of whose faults I think I will write about more in depth sometime soon. Let me just say that I hope in the future that I don't have to explain to my kids that there was a time in American history when there were presidents that weren't part of some Bush/Clinton dueling dynasty.
I'll be sure to report what goes on in the caucus. This plans to be very interesting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I know what you mean about Kucinich, and after I saw him on an environmental forum with Clinton and Edwards and he was unable to say things that weren’t vague despite being pressed, I became concerned about his ability to actually handle the details of the job. But then I thought, how hard can being president actually be? Obviously I don’t know much about it, but I would imagine it’s mostly a matter of not being corrupt and having the general interests of the people in mind. Bush doesn’t have great administrative skills and yet he has been highly successful at basically fucking us over. That is, he has been able to effect a lot of (negative) change despite not appearing to be competent in the putative presidential skills. Most of the president’s work will ultimately be done by bureaucrats overseen by his or her subordinates, so it seems like the job would essentially require someone who is an adequate judge of character and can make sound decisions on broad ethical or policy issues, but not so much the details. So in my opinion Kucinich is cut out for the job even he is flaky. Not like we’ll find out.
Bush has no administrative skills, true, but that can be covered for by a sufficiently talented chief of staff (or, in Bush's case, Dick Cheney), although preferably one has a President who doesn't require delegates to handle diplomacy, be it domestic or foreign.
What Bush also lacks is good communication skills; his ability at public speaking is simply dreadful, and public speaking is arguably the most important job of the Presidency, considering it's a bully pulpit in many respects.
Plus, you want somebody who understands issues to be in charge. Bush doesn't, and thus his term has been a miserable failure. This doesn't argue for giving Kucinich, who's honestly a bit of a twat, the same shot.
Post a Comment