Thursday, February 28, 2008

The presidential field

As of today, there are really only three serious candidates left in the race, and it will soon be two.

Admittedly, I’m not counting Ralph Nader, who is back for another attempt at the Presidency.

While this might shock the Adam Smith hardliners among you, I have a lot of respect for what Nader has accomplished in his life. Certainly it hasn’t been a perfect record of sensibility, but he did bring to light a number of things that had been overlooked (or irritatingly obfuscated) by various industries, and did manage to raise the level of debate in this country regarding safety issues and ethical concerns.

He should be applauded for that.

He should even be applauded for taking a firm public stance on his principles. It’s hard not to admire that, whether you agree with those principles or not.

I’m not convinced that Ralph Nader would make a good President, however—in fact, I think he’d be terrible at it.

This isn’t to say, however, that I don’t think he has a place in politics. But I would love to see him in the Executive Branch—as a Vice President. It would be hilarious. Ralph Nader would be the very best Vice President ever.

Imagine: any sign of corruption in the Senate? He’d be all over it. Hearings all over the place, public debate, exposure of dirty dealings—the whole thing. And if the Speaker of the House were in the same party? There would be a bloodbath—investigations, resignations, censures, new revelations, more investigations . . . and at the end of it, we would probably have a much more open government, with a much less grimy legislative branch.

It’d be a heck of a lot of fun to watch, you have to admit.

But he won’t win—and honestly, I don’t think he’ll even spoil this election much.

McCain is continuing his dubious strategy of pandering to the theocrats in the GOP, and the more he does that, the less interested I am in what he has to say.

The continuing Democratic debate over who the best candidate is has gotten a little wearing. Neither one is focusing on the actual issues, or on their GOP opponent right now—most of their efforts are focused on wresting the Democratic nomination from the other one, and that’s a little depressing, because Clinton doesn’t come off well in that kind of infighting. She seems to enjoy it too much.

Personally, I think Clinton does best when she is speaking passionately on the grand issues, or when she is talking with the public about what she wants to do, or how she perceives things. She can be at times inspiring, thought-provoking and insightful.

Unfortunately, in her recent clashes with Obama, she has come off as brittle, prickly and petty; this wouldn’t be so bad except that it’s such a contrast with Obama’s easy-going, relaxed and unaggravated manner. If Obama were more irritable and a bit snippier, that contrast would virtually disappear . . . but he’s conducting himself brilliantly, and I’m sorry to say that Clinton is not showing any signs of cluing in on that. In their exchanges, he comes across as having a better sense of humor, of being more generous, of having more perspective . . . in short, he comes across as more presidential than she does.

That’s a shame. I think they both have legitimate views, with legitimate differences, and most of those are getting clouded by the infighting, like the dust surrounding a playground brouhaha.

But I’d still rather they were both talking about the abuses going on in this administration, and how they plan to reverse them.

“But it shouldn’t apply to me!”

In other news, I see Rick Renzi (R–AZ01) is not going to step down, in spite of the indictments against him for extortion, wire fraud, and money laundering. I wonder if he will decline his congressional pension. After all, in October of 2006, he announced he was going to introduce legislation to allow the House to sanction dishonorable members of Congress and prohibit them from receiving a congressional pension among other privileges. This was in response to the Mark Foley scandal, of course, but one would assume that his passionate stance would apply to any disgraced member of Congress, right?

But probably not. He’ll stay in, then argue that he deserves his pension, because hey, like an increasing number of GOP congresscritters, apparently the rules they want to apply to others are things they want to be exempt from.