Saturday, January 5, 2008

Obama and Huckabee

Iowa has spoken. They experienced a good turn out and came up with two winners. The media has also spoken and declared that “evangelicals” were responsible for Huckabee’s victory.

I enjoy watching liberals fight with each other so I can’t fault them for making religion a central issue for conservatives. I suppose it is an oversimplification just like with most issues.

There are some significant dilemmas here in America and each candidate has their own views about a solution. You’ve got the war, the economy, immigration, health care, global warning (not a misprint), steroids, terrorism, dog fighting, government spending, mortgage problems, infrastructure repairs, misbehavior by elected officials…

Debates have their place; they allow us to see how they think on their feet. They convey how a candidate will look when serving as president. Screen tests are good. But the forums aren’t everything.

Romney spoke for 20 minutes about his religion last month. Wouldn’t it be great is somehow we could have a four page position paper from every candidate on every one of those issues? No “gotcha” questions, no debate, just a concise explanation from each one on how they would deal with each of the issues of the day.

If you think those papers exist on the websites, you are mistaken. They parse words, spin, and sanitize every issue to the point that you don’t know where they stand. They are short and they don’t say enough about the details. The stand out exception from what I can see is Huckabee. He doesn’t always go way out on a limb but he does get rather specific about several issues.

Check out the websites yourself and see how much substance is there.

Every election the candidate PR packages get more formal and more calculating. They do not serve us well. Everyone sounds good and yet their term in office always disappoints. There must be a better way.

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