Early this morning I looked up American Civil War Army Engineers on the internet and wound up looking at predicted candidates for the 2012 presidential election. Don't you just love wikipedia?
It got me to thinking about why I like or dislike candidates for elected offices.
Although I haven't previously tried to quantify it, I think my decision is based on my assessment on the candidate of three qualities:
1. How much of a politician are they?
2. How much do they agree with me on key issues?
3. How smart are they?
The first one is a bell curve; someone who is completely a politician can't be trusted. They'll sell their soul to win an election, therefore they'll sell their constituents out in a hearbeat. On the flip side, politics is the art of the possible. Someone who doesn't get that won't achieve anything because they'll never get the other politicians to vote for it.
On the second, note "key" issues, and that they are *my* key issues, not whatever the media hotbutton is right now. I would prefer to see marijuana legalized, but I don't really bother reading that part of most candidate's platforms. What are my key issues? Here's another list:
1. Constitutionality
2. Constitutionality
3. Energy policy
Initially that read "individual freedoms" then "states rights" but really, if we just enforced the US Constitution I'd have little to no problem on those issues.
This brings me to the glaring problems I have with the last several administrations; they don't seem to have ever read the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights.
I believe that the TSA security checkpoints at airports constitute an illegal search. (4th Ammendment)
I believe that the government has grossly abused the "Necessary and proper" clause of Article I while completely failing to carry out many of their ennumerated duties under that article.
I believe that both the Judicial and Executive branches of government wield more power than is Constitutional, more than is safe, and more than the founders intended.
I believe that most of our citizens, and almost all of our elected officials, forget the 9th Amendment and ignore the 10th.
I believe that as an adult citizen in good health I have certain duties and responsibilities to the United States. This includes serving in the military at need (I really should register with the Washington State Guard - yes, they're responsible for calling for volunteers, but things move fast in emergencies), voting, paying legal taxes (I pay the illegal ones too, though I'm not happy about it), etc.
I believe that the United States has a duty to protect its citizens, but it is not obligated to protect people who are not citizens, nor is it obligated to provide them social services no matter where they happen to live.
I believe that I have the right to sling my AR-15 over my shoulder, walk into a US Courthouse and politely request compensation for the violations of the security of my person and personnel effects by the TSA. It ain't gonna happen, but if anyone can show me what Constitutional basis a federal agent would have for stopping me, I'd really like to see it.
I also believe that the combination of a cold, 12-hour sudafed, and making 2D sketches to define 3D parts that are already released, is making me ramble on to very little point.
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2 comments:
I like your assessment of qualities for candidates, though I have a different set of key issues. How do you decide how smart they are? Given how little we see of them unscripted, that seems hard to me. For example, different some people decided that Sarah Palin was incredibly stupid, others that she was incredibly smart (and various stages in between). How would you analyze that?
Intelligence is the hardest to assess, mostly because, as you note, we don't see them unscripted very much. For that matter a lot of responses in debates are memorized speaches.
I think Sarah Palin was, and remains, a victim of opposing media bias. As far as I can tell, she's a reasonably intelligent person and at least as qualified for president as PBHO, though I would like to note that unlike him she was going to be the backup for the job. Unless she had the luck of John Tyler, she'd have had plenty of time to get up to speed. Statistically she'd almost certainly have spent her entire term as a professional fifth wheel.
OK, that was somewhat off topic but I got extremely annoyed by the "heartbeat away from the Oval Office" meme working against the Republicans in this last election cycle.
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