Assorted Afflatuses
Vision? What Vision?
MSNBC managed to redeem itself, at least a little, this evening with its second debate between 2008 presidential candidates, in 2007. The candidates actually disagreed on certain points and Chris Matthews did a much better job forcing candidates to answer the questions asked of them. None of the Republicans, however, offered a particularly compelling platform.
I find that I agree with most Democrats on social issues, but I take issue with their insane attempts to make our economy more Swedish. Conversely, I tend to agree with traditional, Republicans on economic issues, but I consider their stances on so-called "moral issues" ridiculous. Of course Republican candidates like Mike Huckabee — who wants the government to enforce morality and despises free-trade — are impossible to endorse.
In this debate, however, the Republicans almost never spoke about economic policy or anything else of substance. Instead, they focused on security and "moral issues." So I found myself constantly annoyed with their statements. I see no purpose in discussing the candidate's positions on abortion, gay marriage, evolution or anything else of the sort. It has no impact on their ability to actually solve problems. It would be akin to saying that an engineer might build a faulty tunnel because he supported abortion rights and, by some ludicrous extrapolation, did not care about life. It's absurd and it needs to end now.
Mitt Romney did manage to make the debate interesting because he was so articulate. If I were casting my vote based solely upon who communicated the most effectively, I would vote for Mr. Romney. Unlike the other candidates, he almost never used fillers — um, and, uh, like, et al — choosing instead to do what any competent speaker would: pause. I may disagree with him almost completely, but at least I can disagree agreeably. He is a breath of fresh air in a sea of politicians, like our current president, who cannot speak to save their lives.
My worst-speaker-of-the-night award goes to Sam Brownback, the Senator from Kansas. O the inarticulateness! It makes me wince.
I will begin with the classic run-on sentence technique, in which the incompetent speaker strings together two or more sentences that should be discrete:
"I'd put forward an alternative flat tax and allow people to choose between the current tax code and system, which doesn't work, which ought to be taken behind a barn and killed with a dull ax, and an alternate flat tax and let them choose."
"I think we all have all values, and that is taken in, and that's taken forward."
Unfortunately, those are but a few choice examples. Almost every one of Mr. Brownback's statements during the debate used the word "and" at least twice, if not more frequently.
Then come the annoying grammatical problems:
"And there are also Democrat members that there was cash found in refrigerators or deep-freezes (sic)."
Note the fact that even the transcriptionist thought the grammatical errors in the second excerpt were so obvious, he or she added a "sic" to the end to indicate that it was Mr. Brownback's error, not the transcriptionist's.
Some of Mr. Brownback's speech was blatantly bad:
"I wouldn't say it dominates it, but I would say it influences it, as it does for everybody."
Granted, that last one may be a clever political tactic to skirt the question by using pronouns so as to make people forget the question's subject.
But the candidates galled me most with their so-called "visions." Not one candidate has put forth anything particularly bold. In fact, the word "oil" was only used in the context of Iraq, not in relation to any sort of visionary energy policy. The word "energy" was mentioned a pitiful seven times, whereas "abortion" and "Iraq" received sixteen and thrity-seven mentions, respectively.
None of the candidates had a visionary education policy designed to put the US back ahead in science and technology. Mike Huckabee made reference to "school," though that statement concerned our progress in Iraq, not actual schools in the United States. Tommy Thompson, the former governor of Wisconsin, spoke about "educational diplomacy," again, in relation to the Iraq war. And Representative Duncan Hunter came the closest, still missing the mark by a mile (or a light-year) with his statement emphasizing his belief that colleges and universities should work with private industry to combat climate change.
John F. Kennedy had a vision when he said America would put a man on the moon. Tonight, the Republican candidates had Ronald Reagan. It's going to be an interesting election.
I agree with you about being socially liberal but economically conservative. Interestingly, that combination comprises the classic libertarian stance.
The thing is, being articulate doesn't really reflect on being a good leader. Stringing together decent-sounding strings of words making important decisions about the country's problems are two different skill sets. Basing your vote on a candidate's ability to articulate is pretty irrational. But I guess in the current system, there isn't much better to base it on.
I don't know that I advocated for voting on the basis of articulateness. Rather, I was attempting to convey just how articulate Mr. Romney was by saying, hypothetically, if that were my metric (which it is not) my vote would go for him. By that same token, I think that any politician, bearing in mind the nature of the job, should be able to speak at least reasonably well. Just look at the UK. Someone like Mr. Brownback could never become PM; he would crumble in less than a minute during PM's questions.