Just to suppress any reader interest, I'll note that I'm voting for the Nader & Gonzalez ticket. I might've considered voting for the Green ticket, but the Presidential candidate strikes me as a bit of a paranoid and the Veep candidate took the opportunity of her nomination to hype her new recording project (still no more irresponsible than Biden nor Palin). Wish I shared McCain's rhetorical conviction that Obama was likely to be the most leftist President we've ever seen, but I foresee an insufficient improvement upon the Nixonian Clinton Admin. But almost everything should be an improvement over the current Kleptocrat regime.
Two things that have occurred to me over the last month or so...first that a rather impressive number of our Presidents and the "major" aspirants to the job have had miserable relations with their fathers. Obama, McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and going back a ways. Certainly Nixon.
Second, and I might just be tired enough to forget seeing others' citation of this, but a military record seems to be the New Short in presidential politics...the guy with the most prominent military record tends to lose, both in the primaries and particularly, if he survives, in the general election. See, certainly: McCain, most likely, Kerry, Gore (although by any reasonable standard, of course, Gore won and gave up), Dole, senior Bush, Carter (at least vs. Reagan), McGovern.
So... bad parental relations with authority figures lead to over-achievers (or a sort)? I can buy that.
ReplyDeleteNo one fit my wishes as a candidate, but we radicals tend to not care about things like that. Just about anything was going to be better than the criminals currently in place.
Mistrust of military experience in the midst of fighting on at least two fronts seems part of our suicidal nature as a nation (maybe John Q Adams was right), but what the hell. Who knows?
I secretly hope Obama is a socialist, but I think it's unlikely. And anyway, he's got a recalcitrant congress to deal with who are far too used to sidling up to the trough for their feed.
Course it's all history now - good luck to Obama and the USA.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Archa...the whole world could use some luck, and less aggro.
ReplyDeleteIt was frightening, Kate, just how much I agreed with Sonia Johnson's platform and campaign announcements when she ran as the Citizens Party's second and last Presidential candidate in 1984. The first US Pres election I could vote for, and not only I but SJ herself were barred from voting for her in Virginia, as we faced the dismal choice of Mondale, Reagan and LaRouche. Faint echo of the New Deal, under those circumstances, won my vote.