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Gary Hart II?

Submitted by aberman on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 09:30

The (false in my view) perception of George Bush's presidency as being a failure looms over the candidates and shapes the current election.  This election will be about gasoline prices, housing prices, and Iraq.  Social and Ideological issues will motivate the bases, but there huge middle will care about not having a second failed presidency.  How do the candidates stack up here and what can we do?

Barack Obama has a significant advantage from just looking more competent.  He's the Blackberry-using, sharply dressed, eloquent whiz kid, who was President of Harvard Law Review.  His campaign is actually his showpiece for competence (after all, he has no record to speak of), and it is doing a very good job in that sense.  Nobody currently thinks of him as a screw-up.

So what are our objections to Barack Obama?  Shouldn't we want a competent guy to run our country?  If not, why not?  And can we express that to others?

The answer is that we don't like Barack Obama because he will screw up the country.  No, he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, but he wouldn't have gone into Afghanistan, either.  We'd still have been negotiating with Mullah Omar over extraditing Bin Laden and been in our 7th year of economic sanctions against the Taliban.  As for the future,  Obama only looks at the demand side of oil, while the common sense approach is to look at demand and supply (i.e., conserve AND drill).  High taxes will stifle economic growth just when it is most needed and absolutely bury housing prices.

Furthermore, it's not as if Barack Obama has a history of success to build on.  He achieved nothing in Washington and nothing in Illinois.  Even as President of Harvard Law Review he achieved nothing. Compare that to McCain's real record.

It may be that the best campaign slogan for McCain is an old one:  Where's the Beef?
 

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I like the competency angle

Submitted by lagomorph on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 11:19.

That would "refresh" the Republican Brand, would it not?  That angle has already been attacked by those (including those on the Right) who have expressed their [really disturbing] opinions that McCain was shot down over North Vietnam because he couldn't fly a plane.  People are saying that his daddy kept him in a pilot's seat long after others would've been dismissed from that duty - you know, the usual character assassination stuff.  His standing at Annapolis wasn't exactly stellar (pretty close to the bottom of his class), and many are making hay with that. 

But there is another angle to this, which I find amusing:  The Harvard admissions office accepted Ted Kaczynski and rejected Warren Buffet, Jann Wenner, Meredith Vieira, Tom Brokaw, Matt Groening, and Lee Bollinger. So I guess the selection process over at Harvard isn't exactly perfect, is it?

I really hope that McCain selects a bulletproof VP.  T-Paw has the distinction of being one of the very few elected officials for whom even Wonkette can't dig up much dirt.  The worst thing she's been able to say about him so far is that he made a joke about not having sex with his wife.  That probably makes a fairly high percentage of married men in the U.S. even more likely to relate to him.