Let us hope it's a blip

[fpb]

Do I need to say that I regard last night's Iowa primary as an unmitigated disaster? On both sides, the worst candidate prevailed. What I have to say about Mike Huckabee I have already said; here I can add that a party who votes in the shallow and lazy Fred Thompson in third place is not worth electing. As for the Democrats, they have also voted for the shallowest and least competent candidate - a junior senator with no record and precious little by way of program. Whatever one may think of Edwards, he stands for certain definite things - the defence of the harassed middle class and the poor, in particular - and has taken clear and definite positions on a number of issues. And Hillary Clinton, however dislikeable she may be, has more experience than any other candidate. On both sides, people have voted for shallow personalities and poor records over competence and character. God help America if this is more than a blip.

Comments

[goreism.livejournal.com]

With respect to experience, the polls they were showing on TV indicated that only around 25% of voters offered experience as a major factor in their choice. After all, most people in the current administration aren't short on experience, and many of their actions have been deeply unpopular (you may have heard =p). Obama's line was that making good judgments was more important than experience simpliciter. Perhaps they remembered another lanky politician from Illinois without much in the way of previous experience. Or maybe they felt Obama's years as a community organizer after graduating from Harvard—something he emphasized repeatedly in ads—was relevant to understanding urban poverty. I remember you yourself arguing in a previous post that term limits were ineffective because politicians spend a few years as a state senator, then as a House representative, then as a US Senator, and so on. Isn't that an argument against experience as the sine qua non of a candidate?

Edwards has decided to occupy a very definite niche in the political spectrum, but I don't think he's taken significantly more positions than the other candidates. It's well known, for example, that Edwards supports health insurance mandates while Obama opposes them, or that Obama supports across-the-board tax cuts for most of the income distribution, while Clinton doesn't. This was a criticism made of Obama early in the race, but I don't think it really applies at this point.

I follow politics more as an interested observer than as a participant, but I'll say this: Obama has a really smart economic advisor in Austan Goolsbee, whom he met when they were both professors at Chicago. (A very nice man, as well.) For what its worth, Obama's first book is well-written and fascinating, and his second book makes it apparent he's no intellectual lightweight—if anyone ever had any doubts on that score.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am glad to hear this and I hope you are right. The one thing we do not want is a president who, by lacking strong or sensible positions to take, ends up becoming the tool of his party supporters by default. I think that was often the case with Bush II, and I suspect that might end up being the case with Huckabee, as some of the positions he has taken are so extreme as to be absurd - and if he ever comes to power, he will be unable to follow through on them, so what shall he do? Likely enough, what his advisers tell him.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

You know, the candidate with the most experience seemed to be Richardson, but certain people I know almost viscerally hated his guts. I never got a chance to find out why, though. Any idea? Maybe because he'd only appeal to Latino voters with the last name "Richardson" (to cop a line from a McSweeney's list).

[fpb.livejournal.com]

From what little I could see, he managed to say more bloopers than anyone else, and left the impression of a hypocrite. But I did not pay a lot of attention to him, and the facts may be quite different. Anyone got an opinion?