A Canadian's choice

[Bruce FLinch]

Democrat or Republican? The question is shockingly easy!
Theo Caldwell, National Post (Canada)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007


An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one
option or the unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too
easy, it is human nature to become suspicious.

This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given choice are raised.
American voters know no greater responsibility to their country and to
the world than to select their president wisely. While we do not yet
know who the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any combination
of the leading candidates from either party will make for the most
obvious choice put to American voters in a generation. To wit, none of
the Democrats has any business being president.

This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent perfection among the
Republican candidates than with the intellectual and experiential
paucity evinced by the Democratic field. "Not ready for prime time,"
goes the vernacular, but this does not suffice to describe how bad
things are. Alongside Hillary Clinton, add Barack Obama's kindergarten
essays to an already confused conversation about Dennis Kucinich's UFO
sightings, dueling celebrity endorsements and who can be quickest to
retreat from America's global conflict and raise taxes on the American
people, and it becomes clear that these are profoundly unserious
individuals.

To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the
Republican side (Ron Paul, call your office), but even a cursory review
of the legislative and professional records of the leading contenders
from each party reveals a disparity akin to adults competing with
children.

For the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New
York City, turning a budgetdeficit into a surplus and taming what was
thought to be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that, he held the
third-highest rank in the Reagan Justice Department, obtaining over
4,000 convictions. Mitt Romney, before serving as governor of
Massachusetts, founded a venture capital firm that created billions of
dollars in shareholder value, and he then went on to save the Salt Lake
City Olympics.

While much is made of Mike Huckabee's history as a Baptist minister, he
was also a governor for more than a decade and, while Arkansas is hardly
a "cradle of presidents," it has launched at least one previous chief
executive to national office. John McCain's legislative and military
career spans five decades, with half that time having been spent in the
Congress. Even Fred Thompson, whose excess of nonchalance has
transformed his once-promising campaign into nothing more than a
theoretical possibility, has more experience in the U.S. Senate than any
of the leading Democratic candidates.

With just over one term as a Senator to her credit, Hillary Clinton
boasts the most extensive record of the potential Democratic nominees.
In that time, Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative
accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately for requesting
$1-million from Congress for a museum to commemorate Woodstock.

Barack Obama is nearing the halfway point of his first term in the
Senate, having previously served as an Illinois state legislator and, as
Clinton has correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run for
president since he first arrived in Washington. Between calling for the
invasion of Pakistan and fumbling a simple question on driver's licenses
for illegal aliens, Obama has shown that he is not the fellow to whom
the nation ought to hike the nuclear football.

John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the adage that the American people
will elect anyone to Congress -- once. From his $1,200 haircuts to his
personal war on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his
28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds of preposterous
lawsuits exploiting infant cerebral palsy, Edwards is living proof that
history can play out as tragedy and farce simultaneously.

Forget for a moment all that you believe about public policy. Discard
your notions about taxes and Iraq, free trade and crime, and consider
solely the experience of these two sets of candidates. Is there any
serious issue that you would prefer to entrust to a person with the
Democrats' experience, rather than that of any of the Republicans?

Now consider the state of debate in each party. While the Republicans
compare tax proposals and the best way to prosecute the War on Terror,
Democrats are divining the patterns and meaning of the glitter and dried
macaroni glued to the page of one of their leading candidate's
kindergarten projects.

Does this decision not become unsettlingly simple?

[ponycar17]

Good one Bruce... Got a link?

[lefty48]

Uuumm... Fred is toast.

Maybe the guy has a point regarding Obama, though lots of people do seem to like him, and sweet talk is half the game ?

It's merely silly not at least acknowledge that Hillary Clinton has some relevant experience, whatever it may be. Bitch.

Rhymes with Kucinich: he's been in Congress for quite a while, and he's at least got a very clear point of view on Iraq...even though not workable point of view...But this is more than one might say for some of the other candidates.

Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New York City, during a great bull market on Wall Street and a remarkable, nationwide turn-around in crime.... He takes lots of credit, but pretty obviously, for no good reason.

God forbid anybody mention that he stationed the city's emergency whatever unit inside the World Trade Center, when a fool could see it would become a target. His dad was a stick-up man (this isn't a dumb vicious rumor, it's simply true) and he nearly got a Mafia guy to head the .. what's it called? "Homeland Security" department for GW. Great Guy. Every politician that ever had to work with the guy hates him for good reason. His MO is to be a pr**k to everybody. Endorsed a Democrat for Governor. Make a swell POTUS.

McCain. I like him okay. Says what he thinks. Would probably want to re-instate the draft. Totally impossible. Not even a remotely practical person.

Romney. Venture capitalist. Fires lots of people. Gets lots of money he doesn't deserve. We all pay for that. Pure ambition. Says what he thinks people want to hear.
Mormon and "Life-long hunter" he-heh. Not for me.

Huck. Nice guy. Lost a lot of weight. Believes in God. What are his qualifications? Yeah, it's all so obvious....Who are the other guys again?

[Bruce FLinch]

Sorry Pony, I just copied & pasted from an email I got.

Lefty, Very astute, Sir!

[lefty48]

From a NYT columnist:

"Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.

Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents."

The premis of the "Canadian" article --at least as I gather -- was that choosing a president is like hiring a job candiadate for a manager job at McDonald's. You look at the resumes and etc....By this particular standard, Hillary Clinton would, simply and rationally speaking, be the obvious choice.

But at least by historical standards, it's an entirely bogus premise, and one the author obviously stated and then simply ignored. Charitably, this makes for a jarringly irrational viewpoint.

[Bruce FLinch]

Originally Posted by lefty48

From a NYT columnist:

"
Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents."

Mckinley got shot, Johnson replaced a guy who got shot, Nixon shot off his mouth, Ford got shot at, & Bush is the one all the Dems would like to shoot.

I believe Lincoln had a minimum amount of Political experience as well.

[lefty48]

That was H.W, the guy from Greenwich, Conn., not Dubya, who had relatively little political experience prior to becoming POTUS.

[Bruce FLinch]

Originally Posted by lefty48

That was H.W, the guy from Greenwich, Conn., not Dubya, who had relatively little political experience prior to becoming POTUS.

OOPS, My Bad. But H. W. Bush got shot down in WWII!

[lefty48]

Quite apart from his (only relatively) moderate, Wall Street-oriented politics, George H.W. Bush, according to Wikipedia, was indeed shot down not once, but twice, in WWII.

(God Bless Daddy's firm of Brown Bros. Bush Harriman, despite their big German plays of the 1930s. Hey, you can't always pick a winner. Looked like a helluva economy, great chemicals industry, and it's all about the efficient allocation of capital and free markets. No? And Harriman, Averill at least, was a great Rooseveltian Democrat. I think he was too old to fight in WWII. Damn...

To this day I truly love trespassing on the massive Harriman estate. In Grandpa's day, their own railroad line went to right front door. (The Keep Out signs still have old man Averill's signature & might be worth money.) To the family's credit, after Grandpa died, at a somewhat young age, Ma donated 10,000 acres to the state about 90 years ago, keeping about 5,000 for sonnyboy Averill. Currently the state owns about 60,000 acres of really nice parkland in the area, some acquired with eminent domain, adjacent to West Point's 15,000 acres and all about an hour from NYC.

You are quite right about Dubya, on the other hand, who had a lesser record in the military: According to Wikipedia: in May 1968... was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard despite only scoring in the 25th percentile on the pilot's written aptitude test, which was the lowest acceptable passing grade.

This was at a time when more than ten thousand Air National Guard personnel, many fighter pilots, had been called to active duty to serve both in Vietnam, and in support of operations there. After training, he was assigned to duty in Houston, flying Convair F-102s out of Ellington Air Force Base.

In 1970 Bush applied to the University of Texas School of Law and was rejected. Bush took a transfer to the Alabama Air National Guard in 1972 to work on a Republican senate campaign, and in October 1973 he was discharged from the Texas Air National Guard almost eight months early to attend Harvard Business School and completed his six-year service obligation in the inactive reserve.

Go figure.
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