01.30.08
None of the above
I don’t often blog about politics, but . . .
As Super Tuesday approaches, doesn’t the pack of remaining candidates, Democratic or Republican, leave you with a sense of dismay? Are these people the best the nation can offer?
Hillary Clinton has been a decent senator for the state of New York, but something of a trimmer when the going gets tough on national issues. Like the present White House occupant, she is incapable of admitting that she makes mistakes. And she has one big and ugly albatross on her shoulder: her meddling husband. What is the White House going to be like if Bill gets back inside?
Barack Obama is a charismatic campaigner and an attractive person, but his actual accomplishments as a legislator, either in Illinois or the Senate, are minuscule. And he has that bulldog on his ankle, his apparently close connection to an exceptionally sleazy Chicago political figure that he refuses to acknowledge, let alone explain.
John Edwards is John Edwards, a pleasant fellow who can’t seem to get it together. He might make a good attorney general, however.
John McCain, of all the candidates, is the most admirable person, thanks to his sterling behavior as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But he seems to have learned nothing from that war and doesn’t think Iraq was a grievous mistake.
Mitt Romney is a rich panderer, as trustworthy as a snake oil salesman. (His Mormonism is utterly irrelevant.)
Mike Huckabee is an enjoyable clown, but do we want someone of his antediluvian intellect near the nuclear suitcase?
Rudy Giuliani, if he’s still in the running as I write this, was a lousy, combative, much-disliked mayor of New York who became an accidental hero on the morning of 9/11.
I’m a liberal. I believe in reproductive choice and cultural inclusiveness. Republicans by and large don’t, and so I won’t be voting for them. Besides, we have had eight years of Republican market greed, irresponsible tax cuts, incompetent cronies and blundering, ideological warmaking, and our country is now reviled among mankind for its arrogance. It’s time to give the Democrats a chance to clean up the mess.
Or make a new one of a different but hopefully not so vicious kind.
So I guess it’s either Hillary or Barack for me on Tuesday, but God help me, I don’t know which box I’m going to mark.
