Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, Obama, Romney. These are the names we can reasonably expect to remain on the presidential ballot in November of 2008. This is what political pundits tell us on television, on the radio, in magazines and in newspapers. This is what we’re told with sixteen months left before we asked as citizens to select our next chief executive. Well, phooey. Personally I like the folks that seem doomed to be remembered as also-rans.
If there’s a single issue I would consider voting on to the exclusion of other considerations, the war in Iraq may well be it. Ron Paul stands alone as a Republican candidate whose foreign policy stance reflects my views. John McCain may be the one that clearly stands against torture (for which I applaud him), and has historically been a pretty reasonable guy, but his unflinching desire to have us bleed all over that God-forsaken region and the fact that he spammed me back in 2000 mark him as unelectable. Between the rest of the Republican crowd, I can spot maybe one or two policy stances each that I can get behind. Ron Paul pushes personal liberty and reasonable foreign policy. The Internet seems to love the guy, but the mass media won’t give him a break. Thom Hartman likes to label him a Libertarian (it’s true, he has even run as a candidate for that party), which means he’s “just a conservative that wants to get laid and smoke dope.” I don’t really see a problem with that, Mr. Hartman.
Mike Gravel, as you can tell from when his name was announced at the PBS Tavis Smiley All-American Presidential Forum, is very well received by those who are familiar with him. He’s got an old-fashioned liberal fire in his belly that hearkens back to before folks were overly concerned with stepping on the toes of little niche groups that are sensitive to every little thing a public figure says. He can afford to speak frankly and vigorously, as he polls abysmally and gets nearly no big-time press at all. He advocates a “fair tax,” which is a consumption tax offset with pre-bates that make it somewhat progressive, pushes strongly against the current war in Iraq, and generally strikes me as a casualty of a political system that spends too much time listening to focus groups and looking ahead to the horse race. Gravel actually comes out against the war on drugs, something few active politicians have the stones to do these days. I have some reservations about the tax changes (how would it affect folks living off capital gains and inheritance?), but I doubt he’ll get enough time in the spotlight to really get things moving on that front.
Joe Biden, as a friend of mine likes to say, comes off like a used car salesman, a total mercenary. He says this as a bad thing, but I tend to disagree. What this country needs right now isn’t somebody that’s going to stand his ideological ground but somebody that knows what he’s doing. We’ve had ham-fisted ideological incompetence for six and a half years now, eight by the time the next president is inaugurated. Senator Biden came out swinging in the CNN Democratic Debate, and I’ve found myself more in favor of a Biden presidency the further this campaign is pressing along.
Chris Dodd really impressed me during the PBS Tavis Smiley All-American Presidential Forum. All along it’s been clear that this man is a very capable, intelligent, knowledgeable Senator, but he just wasn’t breaking away from the pack and getting even less press than Gravel and Biden for his trouble. I’m curious to see where his campaign heads from here, with his emphasis on restoring constitutional rights and habeas corpus, both of which I’d like to say I’m in favor of.
Bill Richardson may well be the most qualified person running for president. I don’t expect him to catch anybody’s ear with fiery rhetoric like we’ve heard from Paul, Gravel, Biden, and (just recently) Dodd. With front-row candidates sucking up so much of the big-time press coverage, it’ll take a miracle for this New Mexico governor to get his name at the top of his party’s ticket. If he did, I’d vote for him without hesitation.
As for the others, Brownback, Gilmore, Huckabee, Hunter, Kucinich, Tancredo, and Thompson, well… I’m just not interested in what they’re selling.
You might find it interesting that Ron Paul currently has more cash on-hand than John McCain:
http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/jul/06/ron_paul_has_more_cash_on_hand_than_john_mccain
Substantively, the only thing I find appealing about Ron Paul is his position on the War and particularly his candor in exploring the motivations behind terrorism, rather than pandering to the they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms GOP nativist base. I wish the Democratic candidates would step up and denounce the entire rhetorical and philosophical basis for the so-called “war on terror” and propose in its place an intelligent foreign policy. The public knows this GWOT bullshit is harming rather than securing America, and the Democrats are in prime position to capitalize on that sentiment. The fact that they don’t is frankly quite baffling.
Barring these complaints, and despite their individual flaws, I find the top three Dems acceptable to me. Bill Richardson is clearly the most qualified on paper, but I highly doubt he will ever place better than a tie for third place in the primaries. Barack Obama has been criticized for being rhetorically elegant but substantively empty which is a fair criticism, but I hardly expect candidates to have fully-fleshed out policy plans at this stage of the election season. All they need is a position, and each of the candidates fulfills that requirement. Something else worth noting is Obama’s strong mass support. Not only did he blow away Sen. Clinton in fundraising last quarter, but he received the lion’s share of that money from small donors. That to me is undeniable popular (i.e. mass) appeal, something that Clinton has yet to demonstrate in abundance. At the end of the day, however, I think Clinton has a larger base of support than is apparent on the surface. My biggest complaint about her campaign is who she surrounds herself with. Democrats have shown an irritating inclination over the past decade and a half to take truly horrible advice from a class of permanent DC apparatchik political consultants that has led to inconsistency on policy. Ditching these overpaid cynics should be the first order of business for a Democrat hoping to build a formidable electoral coalition.
As for the GOP candidates, I find them all appalling. McCain seemed like a reasonable guy back in 1999/2000 but it is important to remember that he was the neocon’s preferred candidate because of his foreign policy positions and they only switched loyalty to Bush after Rove smeared McCain in South Carolina. And for someone who has a reputation for anger, McCain has been quite serene considering that he could have–perhaps should have–been the GOP nominee seven years ago. Now that he is pandering to the very forces who destroyed his chances back then he appears insincere and anything but a “maverick.” And that’s even before we consider his position on Iraq, which totally sinks him. I disagree with the observation that McCain “clearly stands against torture” because his vote helped make the Military Commissions Act of 2006 possible which, among other things, gutted the writ of habeas corpus and codified the administration’s immoral and illegal treatment of detainees. A similar phenomenon is happening in the Supreme Court where the two Bush appointees have maintained a consistent 5-4 majority that guts, rather than overrules, past precedent in favor of what are known as “conservative” positions. That’s how these people operate, by undermining the foundations of liberalism rather than attacking it frontally. When they do that, they fail (e.g. the Social Security privatization debacle of 2005).
Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson are beginning to look more and more like clones of one another. They repeatedly make allusions to authoritarianism in their hypothetical administrations, and each lack experience or even basic knowledge of foreign policy, on which they have been deemed “strong” by the pundit class of high school politics analysis. If any of these assholes are elected presidents, it will be because Chris Matthews (to cite but one example) finds them manly. Conservatism has become a form of identity politics, so it is hardly surprising that these three offer little more than an image to sell, particularly when they get a free pass on substantive issues from the afore-mentioned chattering classes.
This wasn’t intended to be long, but all of it needed to be covered.
You make some excellent points here, and though I’m loathe to do anything that appears supportive of a known spammer (Senator John McCain), you may want to look over the Military Commissions act itself in regards to torture, particularly section 6, entitled “IMPLEMENTATION OF TREATY OBLIGATIONS.” It reaffirms that the President of the United States may implement specific policies of a higher standard than those of the Geneva Conventions, and then goes into some detail about physical and mental suffering, as well as sexual contact. Just because people in the current administration are nearly incapable of abiding by the law doesn’t make the law itself bad (specifically in regards to torture; the habeas corpus bit is awful). All of that having been said, the Republicans seem to be flushing McCain out of the race. To come up from the back on the pack is one thing, but to slip away from high expectations to take the lead again? Another matter entirely.
I concur that Senator Clinton hasn’t really shown the kind of mass appeal that Senator Obama has, but I wanted to focus on the folk further back in the standings. Hillary and Barack get plenty of chatter on blogs, the radio, newspapers, magazines, and television as it is.