Sometimes a lightning bolt of a thought strikes from nowhere. When it does, you know you have found your answer.
There is a false quality many have mentioned about the front runners. Scripted to every detail, repetitive as a hammer, their responses seem nice, agreeable, and flat……
The problem with the political process, is that Americans are not involved. Each candidate is a carefully marketed bag of rice, and all the marketing is designed to say: “pick me.” In our busy lives, we are not only responsible for picking out the “rice”, but also the milk, the car, the cereal, the dessert treats, gasoline, etc. The election process boils down to just another product piped into my home by cable, mail, or obscene phone banks.
Normally these things happen to me in a church pew, but this time the answer I needed came from a surprising source.
In a recent comment, Tyler Nixon dished up the answer. As soon as I saw it, I realized that those of us who care about the future of Constitutional Government need to steer the campaign towards this direction. Speaking of Biden, Tyler says this.
Biden, for example, has emerged as not only a “gaffe machine” but a Teflon one! Why? Because he is forgiven these “sins” as coming from a genuine man revealing himself rather than a plasticine politician exposing himself.
Like the other candidates I mentioned Biden’s foibles make him “real”. One thing a professional politician can’t fabricate is a good foible. If you have none, you are not to be trusted in my view. Those who would present themselves as perfection have the most imperfections to hide – if not the worst ones….
In such a similar way Reagan endeared himself to millions of Democrats, thereby enabling the beginning of the Republican regime. One knows a long termer is wary of trips and hazards, and Biden is a long termer. Comparatively, the newness of some of our front runners, is not reassuring. No Senator since Kennedy has attained election as the most powerful person in the world. Perhaps that is why relations between Congress and Executive are at an all time low…..
What I’m looking for in a candidate is someone I can trust. I don’t expect perfection, not in this day and age, but I am looking for an old warrior. Someone who has seen up close both the good and the bad of human nature, and will do everything to promote the good, and anything to stop the bad.
Democrat or Republican does not matter. Fixing America, does.
I’ll trust an imperfect friend before I’ll trust a salesman who attempts to sell me on his candidate’s perfection.
kavips 
4 comments
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July 25, 2007 at 11:15 am
Tyler Nixon
On a discrete point you hit, my personal criteria for President in 2008 is now completely and inalterably narrowed to members of Congress, present or former. No Governors. No former Governors. And certainly no goddamn mayors.
We need to get away from electing individuals as president who are totally out-of-touch with the people’s body, prone to executive egomania, and certainly not empathetic or sympathetic to the proper role and constitutional duties of our Congress.
We need someone from the Hill who can return from 1600 PA Ave him/herself and walk amongst former colleagues, rather than adversaries, making REAL CHANGE happen.
To expand my list of authentics with foibles, I really like Bill Richardson. In my gut feeling above all. I just sense this guy wants to do good for the public and is willing to move with the times. Ditto Tommy Thompson, but he is a bit old hat at this point solid as he is.
My fear this coming years is that young people finally engage en masse in the political process, after decades of stunted apathy…and end up giving us all a vapid MTV-ish trend president (Obama or, by default of Bill’s legacy – Hillary).
This next president needs to be one of the last of the previous generation, not the first of a new generation. The country is not ready yet.
July 25, 2007 at 11:22 am
Tyler Nixon
Oh, and thanks for the mention. Coming from you it is always high praise, kavips. Again, I am disconcerted you feel compelled to mask your real identity because you have my deepest respect and I wish I could impart it directly to the person behind the pseudonym.
No matter what, please never stop posting your thoughts and ideas. I find them extremely worthwhile, well-considered, insightful, and stimulating, at least coming from my own perspective on things.
Regards.
July 25, 2007 at 1:20 pm
kavips
My dealings with young people have proven the opposite. They are they are a little jaded and a little smarter than we often take them for. Currently they are involved with scrambling to find their economic future in a moral less jungle where “the corporation” makes all rules.
There used to be much more balance between government, business, and personal life. Today’s youth are paying off college loans three or four times higher than faced by previous generations. Most of them financed their own way through school, often taking a fifth year to balance work and school, and face it….gas is not 99 cents a gallon and cars are not still at $10,999. And they have to do this on less money, not more than other generations earned. And they are wired. As long as our cell towers are working, they constantly communicating.
As they came of age, and matured, they realized that as long as they play by the rules, the supply-siders will keep them under control, sort of like Mr. Potter did to his renters when there were not other options available……
They are not dumb. Their apathy is perhaps grounded on their intelligence. They say ” there are not enough of us to make a difference now, let’s focus on other things while we can.”
If there is any qualm about this new generation taking over, let me add: these are the guys who cruised into Baghdad…..they are amazing……..
And thanks for the kind words.
July 25, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Tyler Nixon
k – I am talking about a snapshot of the prevailing mindset that may/could produce the next president. I was not commenting on the ethic of an entire generation. I am 35, so almost everything you mentioned roughly describes my own background, however in a more protracted and transitional sense. Economically stabilizing one’s self, much less growing your resources, is a serious struggle unless you pretty much came right into a damn good paying job, out of a wealthy family, or into some type of windlfall.
Read this and see what I am talking about : http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_46/b3959107.htm
I have no special sense of reverence for the generation just behind me any more than for my own generation. We all face(d) the same challenges, except in their cases they have FAR more tools at their disposal than I recall having at 18, or even 25.
I would rather be entering the work force right now than to be where I am, supposedly in my earning prime just as inflation, interest rates, and the wealthy all rise together, leaving many of us behind in the doldrums, having risked being entrepreneurs relying on a rising tide that Bush et al robbed from us with his warring mania and profiteering for his wealthy buddies.
After years of apathy amongst so many of my peers, until I was no longer very young, I am glad to see young people engage. Look at a Mat Marshall, for example. Who wouldn’t be inspired by a young person who can think and produce on the level he does?
My reservations are not over the truly bright movers and shakers of his generation, but the more pedantic ones who will, irrespective of intelligence, treat politics like a gameshow-esque (or reality show-esque) free-for-all, cheapened and watered down by lightning information technology. I have noticed one thing about the young ones engaging : they seem to have a lot to say and a lot of information to back it up. I only question how much thought and reflection could possibly go into it – the type that only comes over time and only with concerted effort to wrap one’s head around knowledge and revisit it, ongoing over time (years) versus in constant blog bursts.
I consider myself lucky in that I straddled the digital/analog crossover in our culture. I remember when you had to think and reflect and when there was not an information inundation much less endless array at your fingertips. You had to seek out knowledge, work for it – which was itself a worthwhile reflective process. It is great to have all the answers at your fingertips, but even better to have to put some effort into finding them for yourself, imho.
Just my musings. I know I would not trade having grown up when I did for anything/everything young people have today at their disposal. I very much get where you are coming from. I just don’t have any slack to cut anyone, frankly.