My Political Desert
A Tale of Two Cities, Mario Cuomo, 1984
Ann Richards, Poor George, 1988
A Place Called Hope, Bill Clinton, 1992
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama, 2004
(Author's note: the link to Ann Richards and Bill take you to related sites for a reason only explained by my utter inability to work this damned internet thing. "Google" what I've called each link and you can get to the link. My abject apology is offered."
One win out of four. But, you have to admit they are a whole lot better at speechifing than the Republicans. Abe Lincoln was probably the last good one with “Four score….”
If you want to read and listen to wonderful rhetoric, click the links.
For the last twenty-three years, I’ve listened to these speeches, each of the linked speeches live. I loved them. I was moved by them. I quite voting for them Bill’s second time around as, late in life, I grew up.
My wake up call, long before Jerry Maguire, was “show me the money.” It wasn’t and isn’t there.
That isn’t to say that I switched sides. I couldn’t abide the “Gipper.” The first Bush was a “place-keeper.” Bob Dole was one of the sourest people I’ve ever seen. Our current guy, well, read the archives of the blog.
What strikes me about our politicians is their calculated intention to ignore what is important to our society and lead people astray from what they should be thinking about.
We have a ton of crucial issues facing us in the near and mid term future. I won’t bother beyond that time period.
I invite you to tell me one concrete proposal that any Republican or Democratic candidate for President next year has on any issue that is fully laid out and fully funded, considering the need to fund the rest of our government. (There’s one exception to that invitation, on one issue, by one candidate. Mike Huckabee has signed on to the “FairTax” bandwagon, as small as it is. It is self-supporting. The only problem with liking his support of that issue is he is pretty much a social/civil liberty Neanderthal on everything else.) Back to the main point, the “pie” is only so big; and our candidates keep promising slices that when added up, total more than one.
Life Hiker, see the Recommended sidebar, in a comment to a post on R World, see likewise, said Bill Clinton was the best liberal Republican he’d ever seen. The post and the comment were the impetus for this post.
I’d actually like to see a candidate that, don’t boo me now, combined the qualities of Bill Clinton and Jimmie Carter. Ability, pragmatism and morality. Oh, and add a dash of Patrick Moynihan and Newt Gingrich, in their heyday, for fiscal responsibility.
Don’t see anyone out there fitting my bill.
5 comments:
Show me a candidate who has really walked the walk of being middle-class or even poverty stricken. Show me one who has had to deal with the reality of the nightmare our healthcare system can be for many -someone who has had to live without health insurance or had inadequate income to be able to afford even an annual general checkup with a physicial, not some fancy-schmancy 3-5 day stay at the Mayo Clinic or some such. Show me a candidate who has ideas about how to realistically correct employment issues here -one who will work to maintain jobs in THIS country, not half way around the world. Show me a candidate who understand problems within the education system and within society itself that keep us on a downturn in the academic community world-wide, with our kids scoring lower than many other countries. Those and so many other issues - fair play, morals, ethics that are not in dispute. Then, maybe, just maybe I'll figure that's the one candidate for me but so far, I've not seen anyone surfacing who meets that criteria.
It's come to a point where I honestly don't pay all that much attention to the speeches any candidate make, to the promises they spout out because you and I and everyone else knows, as far as the President goes, that person only has a small amount of power really unless he or she is really, really good at manipulating the House and Senate members to vote a specific way without compromising everything in the process.
The speeches are all programmed to make people have a "feel good" opinion and don't really show what the real world -or at least the one that exists here -is all about most of the time.
Oh, man, you find a candidate like that, and they'll get my vote and a lot of my volunteer energy. Unfortunately I don't think I need to plan on how to fit the activity into my agenda.
I wish I could say that I had such a person for you, but I don't. You did, however, give me reason to mention a few of my issues with the whole election process...
Seems that the only people who want the job are the ones least capable of doing a good job. Something about the glory seeking personality types means they are good at getting elected, but putrid at being "presidential."
Living in Pennsylvania, I am infuriated by the primary process. By the time the Pennsylvania primary rolls around, the candidates have been all but voted on at the conventions. A few years ago, the best two people for the job - McCain and that Democrat dude, the former basketball player or something (and no, I don't feel the need to justify that opinion) - were out of it by the time the PA primary rolled around. Left me feeling disenfranchised like a son of a bitch.
You know what I hate when watching the debates? When the candidate doesn't answer the question that was asked, but instead answers the question that he/she wishes were asked. If a sales person does that to me, I don't buy a car that day. Why would I want my country run by a person I wouldn't buy a used car from?
Finally, as Bobcat Goldthwait said in the 80's, "Getting mad at Ronald Reagan for the economy is like getting mad at Ronald McDonald when you get a bad Big Mac. Neither one of them runs the place..."
Did you see the article on the front page of Sunday's AJC about Sam Nunn possibly throwing his hat in the ring as an independent? What did you think about it? I hope that if the two parties don't give us any good choices that someone else would step up. I am worried that I will not have anyone I can stomach voting for. I don't have much faith in the primary process to come up with decent candidates.
I've been voting for the Libertarian candidate for President since '96. Useless, I know, but....
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