Election '08 by Gus, Part 4

My thoughts on the current situation:

- The election will clearly be either McCain - Clinton, or McCain - Obama.

- Huckabee is in it at this point only to position himself as the logical VP candidate, especially since McCain has a hard time with two core Republican constituencies: Club For Growth types, and James Dobson Focus on the Family types. Since Huckabee seems to be the hands-down choice of the latter type, picking him would shore up one of McCain's two major intra-party weaknesses.

- That said, my respect for McCain as a candidate will drop sharply if he picks Huckabee. I'm glad Huckabee tried to do some good by the poor people in his state, but the guy doesn't believe in evolution, and his latest proposal is to impeach judges that cite international law in their judicial opinions. I mean, sure, what possible use could international law be for a nation? And who gives a shit about freedom of expression anyway? If McCain picks him and gets elected, that potentially positions Huckabee as the presumptive Republican candidate for the Presidency in 2016, which is a prospect I find terrifying.

- The Clinton - Obama race is fascinating to watch unfold. It seems very close, and if it goes into the convention undecided, I think that favors Clinton, because of the super-delegate issue. The Democratic Party machinery is loaded with Clintonites and/or people who owe the Clintons politically, and so I think if it gets decided at the convention, it'll go to Clinton.

- I don't dislike Clinton. I think she's intelligent and thoughtful, and can probably do an OK job, certainly a thousand times better than the current job. But she's basically arguing "I'm better than the other guy at playing the current political game." She is almost certainly right about that. But Obama is arguing "I want to be playing a different game." Amen to that. I'm tired of the current game. Maybe he would succeed, and maybe he wouldn't, but I'm certainly ready for someone to give it a shot. Clinton, by saying she can handle the attack machine, is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that will ensure that the attack machine is going in full gear if she gets elected.

- Speaking of Clintons, an implicit part of her message is "remember how good things were in the 90's, when we Clintons were in the White House?" Things were better to be sure, and Bill Clinton did a good job overall, but he will always be a disappointment to me. He was good, maybe even very good, but he could have been great. I find him disappointing not because of the many compromises he made to get things passed; although I would have liked to see much more progressive action happen, Clinton for the most part faced a Congress that was at best not inclined to be cooperative, and at worst hostile. So, I'm OK with most of the compromises- at least some good stuff got done. By and large, more progressive versions of what did get done probably wouldn't have passed Congress.

In addition, he got Yugoslavia right, and even though he got Rwanda wrong, the reality is that getting it wrong didn't cost us a trillion dollars or the political support of a sizable chunk of the rest of the world. And although he faced a massive Republican attack machine, for a long time they really had nothing on him, and he was still able to get stuff done. As long as they had nothing on him, the Republicans really did sound like a vast right-wing conspiracy.

But because he couldn't keep his internal demons at bay for 8 years, he did eventually give them something, and although it didn't end up costing him nearly as much as it could have, it cost the country a lot, and for that I will always view him as a disappointment. In the end, lackluster campaigning, Supreme Court interference, and election shenanigans aside, the 2000 election should never have been anywhere as close as it was. Although it's not possible to know for sure, I think a lot of people did not so much vote for George W. Bush as against Bill Clinton, in the form of his designated heir, Al Gore. And that has cost us dearly.

It's worth pondering for a second: why did Republicans hate Bill Clinton so much? I believe the answer is this- that the modern Republican party, for whatever reason, has made as one of its foundational assumptions that government is never good, that essentially the only good thing it can ever do is cut taxes. And so, competent, reasonably well-run government is an anathema to Republicans, because it is a blatant contradiction of everything their party now stands for. And Clinton ran a pretty competent government. So the longer that went on, the more Republicans just had to find a way to kill it, before everyone started believing we could have that all the time.

That's also, I think, why so many Republicans, especially Club For Growth types, hate John McCain. He looks suspiciously like someone who might run a competent government, not like a George W. Bush, who will cut taxes and otherwise run a thoroughly incompetent government that will help reinforce the Republican idea that government can't work. That's part of why I like John McCain.

But in the end, I voted for Obama here in CA, and will happily vote for either him or Hillary in November. Not because I dislike John McCain, but because you don't just elect a man or woman, you elect a party, and there aren't enough John McCains in the Republican party. And then if he picks someone like Huckabee as his running mate, forget it. He has his first chance to really lead his party now- pick another moderate to run with. Which brings me to:

- Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that this is clearly the Democrats' year. I don't think that's a slam-dunk at all. I think in McCain-Obama, Obama wins that in a very close election, and in McCain-Clinton, McCain wins that in an even closer election, principally because I think there is a non-trivial pool of people in the 10 or so states that are in realistically in play that are willing to vote Obama, but will not vote Clinton under any circumstances.

So for me, the biggest current source of election stress is: who does John McCain pick as his running mate?