StorminNorman
Avenger
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2005
- Messages
- 30,513
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 33
Found this interesting...
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, due ling 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 budget deficit 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 request ing $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 unsettling simple?
