Category: Politics

AOL Presidential Match Guide

Well, after Tuesday, I guess I will sort of know if I have to eat my words in my recent posting announcing not only my support for Dean but confidence in his coming victory.

While reading Cliopatria today I came across a great link to a Presidential Match website. It was better than other attempts I have seen at this and I went through the whole test. The results were amusing. According to my views on various issues, and my ranking of their importance, all the democrat candidates scored between 71-100%. Bush scored 6%, presumably because I share some of his views on economics and trade. In descending order, the quiz recommended I vote for: Kucinich (100%), Sharpton (95%), Kerry (91%), Clark (85%), Dean (83%), Edwards (78%), and Lieberman (71%). The site also allows you to compare candidates on the issues, side by side (for example Dean, Clark, Edwards, and Kucinich). It would of course be nice, though unreasonable to expect, columns for intelligence, knowledge, wit, tact, charisma, and “snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected”. These categories might help knock a few points off of Bush’s 6% and the last of these, chip away at Kucinich’s 100%.

Dean against the Incombent

As an American citizen, I am fortunate enough to have the right participate in a process which ultimately determines the ruler of the world for the next four years.

I have never been particularly political in my life, in so far as I have had a very realistic view of politics and because I am rarely pleased with any candidates in an election enough to need to share my favorite with others.

I am admittedly as “liberal” as it gets when it comes to most social and environmental issues, so radically so that few candidates for elections would stand a chance if they stood with me on those issues. On many economic issues, and particularly those concerning international trade, I am far less in tune with the policies and ideas of the political spectrum represented by the Democratic party in the United States, let alone those who inhabit its left flank.

I don’t want to go into the details of my positions on all the issues in fad right now, but instead simply post here, “officially” as it were, that in this election I will not only be voting, but doing what I can to persuade my friends and acquaintances lucky enough to have the right to vote in the “mother of all elections” that they should vote, and cast their vote the way of Howard Dean…
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Failure

Senator Byrd has very eloquently summarized the most stark result of this week’s events:

“Today I weep for my country,” said West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd. “No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. … Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

“We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance,” Byrd said, adding: “After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America’s image around the globe.”
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State of the Union

Most of my friends know that I am no fan of Bush. I have never been really impressed with his speech writers either, and Tuesday’s State of the Union speech was no exception.

Around the world everyone who cared enough to listen were waiting to hear how soon the small “coalition of the willing” were going to go to war and whether the US had come up with any compelling reasons to do so. Unfortunately, there was much of the usual, though there was a promise to reveal evidence. I think the last time that was promised we were told of aluminum pipes that the IAEA believe can be unrelated to nuclear arms research.

The speech was, however, an interesting study in what has increasingly become the debate over America’s approach to foreign policy and the terms it uses…
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