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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-07-25

Not My Words 

After it was over, I for the first time went systematically through my feelings about each candidate. For whatever it's worth, here goes:

Hillary Clinton: Clearly competent and politically savvy, but politics as usual if she gets elected. I got no real sense of a vision for the direction of the country . . .

Barack Obama: pretty much the opposite of Hillary Clinton; . . . Sadly, I still think that America is still too racist and sexist to elect a black man or a white woman.

John Edwards: One trick pony: poverty. It's a great trick and a great pony, but it's not enough.

Joe Biden and Chris Dodd: stay in the Senate, guys. You're doing a good job there.

Bill Richardson: . . . But he just doesn't seem presidential to me; . . .

Dennis Kucinich: one trick pony: end the war. . . .

Mike Gravel: kudos for his stance in Vietnam (I am a vet of that era), but I don't want that anger running the country.

What about stupid drug laws, fighting terrorism by inconveniencing terrorists (that stupid no-fly list, nail clipper confiscation, taking off shoes), the death penalty, media concentration and other antitrust enforcement, clean water and air (global warming is important, but not the only environmental issue), lobbying reform, union organizing, prescription drug importation, .... Maybe the Republican debate will address these things.

This is an excerpt from a liberal's impression of the Monday night debate. Oddly, so many of his impressions are spot-on with what most conservatives would say, also. Except, of course, Obama: it's not that America is too racist to elect a black man, it's that Obama's too inexperienced to trust at the helm.

I did watch a little of the debate--about 20 minutes. That's all I could take. It wasn't just that the people on stage were bad, and that Anderson Cooper was smarmy and out of his depth; it's that the YouTube-generation representatives the CNN people picked to ask questions were SOOO embarassingly naive and self-serving. If this is the kind of person who will populate the corridors of power as interns and assistants if the Dems win the White House, then we are in a heap of trouble.

The people CNN picked to ask questions were in no way representative of the young men and women I've worked with of this generation. Somehow, CNN managed to find every slacker with a grudge and a computer camera.

Which makes sense--the good ones are all a little busy to take part in such navel gazing.

We can hope, as does the author above, that the Republican debate will address the serious issues, and do so with a little more impressive collection of questioners.
Posted by: Michael / 7/25/2007 07:35:00 AM

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