With respects to Joel's different opinion, I regard that as a shame. He was the last candidate with significant foreign policy experience except Clinton, and the only candidate to appear with military experience, at a time when the world is increasingly on fire thanks to the weak President we've had for eight years. Now the best we can hope for is someone with no experience at all, as the one remaining candidate with any is the worst candidate in the race. She has treated national security as disposable for her personal convenience, as shown by her treatment of classified information. She has treated the people who conduct national security as disposable, also. Prima facie evidence from comparing weapons sales to donations to the Clinton Foundation suggests she has also treated these matters as being chiefly about personal enrichment rather than the furtherance of American security in the world.
Thus we shall have to place our hopes on a novice, or someone not even a novice, at a very dangerous hour.
7 comments:
I'm sorry, Grim. I know you were excited by his candidacy.
It's very rare that my candidate of first choice survives long enough for me to get to vote for them in the Georgia primary. This year has been especially disappointing, however. Comparing who was a potential in both parties last summer with today, I would have to say that with one or two exceptions all of the best candidates have already been winnowed out.
I was just telling my brother the other day, that I would look favorably upon Trump if he took on Webb as his VP. Dreaming, I know.
Sometimes I just shake my head in disgust- out of three hundred fifty million people, these are the ones we have come up with to lead our country?
Makes a damned good case for a single malt, a campfire, and a long way to civilization.
That's usually my preference anyway.
"Sometimes I just shake my head in disgust- out of three hundred fifty million people, these are the ones we have come up with to lead our country?"
Well, these are the ones willing to step up and audition for the job, at least.
I suspect that most people with the sense and decency to make a good president have no desire to have their (and their family's) good name and reputation drowned in the social septic tank of a political campaign, especially at the national level.
I don't think we really want to elect an adult in this country.
Presidential campaigns remind me more of popularity contests than job interviews (which is *precisely* what they ought to be).
Whatever happened to electing a decent, well qualified, responsible person who was committed to doing his best for the nation (oh, and whose public policy preferences best align with your own, realizing that the group who run are the ones you have to choose from?).
Nope - that's not enough anymore. We want a perfect match: someone who promises to do things any fool should realize he can't possibly deliver, who feels our pain, comes from whatever group we identify as this week, entertains us, sends a shiver up our collective legs, someone who does good theater.
We don't care much about qualifications (if we did, we wouldn't even consider anyone who hasn't at least run a state of some size). Wrt to Matt's astute comment above, I can't help but think that if we weren't such picky eaters, the menus might be more appetizing.
As it is, I agree with him - we're not selecting for the qualities we ought to want in a candidate because the process is so distasteful that anyone with a brain finds it hard to say anything with a straight face. That shouldn't be disqualifying, IMO.
/rant
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