[Rhodes22-list] Political--Canadian's View

[Leland]

The following is an unsolicited, political view of someone I've never heard
of and does not necessarily represent the opinion of this junk email sender,
but it looks like something at least one of you would enjoy.
 
Subject: A Canadian's View Of Our Presidential Candidates

Democrat or Republican? The question is shockingly easy!
Theo Caldwell, National Post (Canada)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007

An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one
option or the unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too
easy, it is human nature to become suspicious.


This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given choice are raised.
American voters know no greater responsibility to their country and to the
world than to select their president wisely. While we do not yet know who
the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any combination of the leading
candidates from either party will make for the most obvious choice put to
American voters in a generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any
business being president.


This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent perfection among the
Republican candidates than with the intellectual and experiential paucity
evinced by the Democratic field. "Not ready for prime time," goes the
vernacular, but this does not suffice to describe how bad things are.
Alongside Hillary Clinton, add Barack Obama's kindergarten essays to an
already confused conversation about Dennis Kucinich's UFO sightings, dueling
celebrity endorsements and who can be quickest to retreat from America's
global conflict and raise taxes on the American people, and it becomes clear
that these are profoundly unserious individuals.


To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the
Republican side (Ron Paul, call your office), but even a cursory review of
the legislative and professional records of the leading contenders from each
party reveals a disparity akin to adults competing with children.


For the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New York
City, turning a budget deficit into a surplus and taming what was thought to
be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that, he held the third-highest rank
in the Reagan Justice Department, obtaining over 4,000 convictions.

Mitt Romney, before serving as governor of Massachusetts, founded a venture
capital firm that created billions of dollars in shareholder value, and he
then went on to save the Salt Lake City Olympics. 

While much is made of Mike Huckabee's history as a Baptist minister, he was
also a governor for more than a decade and, while Arkansas is hardly a
"cradle of presidents," it has launched at least one previous chief
executive to national office. John McCain's legislative and military career
spans five decades, with half that time having been spent in the Congress.
Even Fred Thompson, whose excess of nonchalance has transformed his
once-promising campaign into nothing more than a theoretical possibility,
has more experience in the U.S. Senate than any of the leading Democratic
candidates. With just over one term as a Senator to her credit, Hillary
Clinton boasts the most extensive record of the potential Democratic
nominees. In that time, Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative
accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately for requesting
$1-million from Congress or a museum to commemorate Woodstock. Barack Obama
is nearing the halfway point of his first term in the Senate, having
previously served as an Illinois state legislator and, as Clinton has
correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run for president since he first
arrived in Washington. Between calling for the invasion of Pakistan and
fumbling a simple question on driver's licenses for illegal aliens, Obama
has shown that he is not the fellow to whom the nation ought to hike the
nuclear football. John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the adage that the
American people will elect anyone to Congress -- once. From his $1,200
haircuts to his personal war on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his
28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds of preposterous
lawsuits exploiting infant cerebral palsy, Edwards is living proof that
history can play out as tragedy and farce simultaneously. Forget for a
moment all that you believe about public policy. Discard your notions about
taxes and Iraq, free trade and crime, and consider solely the experience of
these two sets of candidates. Is there any serious issue that you would
prefer to entrust to a person with the Democrats' experience, rather than
that of any of the Republicans? Now consider the state of debate in each
party. While the Republicans compare tax proposals and the best way to
prosecute the War on Terror, Democrats are divining the patterns and meaning
of the glitter and dried macaroni glued to the page of one of their leading
candidate's kindergarten projects.

Does this decision not become unsettlingly simple?




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