Primaries Vote Starts Tomorrow

The primaries in the US start tomorrow with the Iowa Caucuses. Usually, I like to keep well informed and get to know as much as I can about the candidates, but this time around I have been quite busy and I haven't been following in much detail. But the primaries are now, so time to make my mind and write it down for future reference.

Writing down my opinion on things is an exercise that I like to do so I can come back latter and figure out what where my mistakes and misconceptions. Where I was wrong and where I was right. If I don't put my thoughts in righting, as the future unfolds I tend to overlook the things where I was wrong and focus on the things where I was right. Also my opinions start to bend to adjust to reality without me noticing. In the end, if I don't write it down, I end up thinking that I was right all along. This is bad obviously, because I end up thinking that I'm a political genius that can always see through things and I miss the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and correct.

So what do I thing about the 2008 candidates? Well, as I have mention before, I haven't follow well enough to have a very solid opinion. There is a couple of candidates that I sort of like, I wouldn't be too worried if they get elected. Where I have more strong feelings is who I don't want to be elected.

The two mainstream candidates that I would not want to see nominated are Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Why?

Let's start with Senator Clinton. Seriously, who wants to hear about another Bush or Clinton after 2008? Not a good enough reason? Let's look at her background, apart for being a Senator for two terms, what other hands on experience does she have? Where did she learn to distiguis between the people that can talk pretty and those that actually know what they are talking about? Finally, let's look at what she did during her time in the senate. She did not spend her time on the big problems or pressing issues. Rather, she spend some of her time in hearings on such meaningful topics as "Grand Theft Auto". Let's just forget for a moment that there are people loosing their homes (not to talk about war) and let's instead focus on the contents of a video game which is rated mature.


Let's look now at Mayor Giuliani. Have you guys read his “Leadership” book? If you haven't and plan to vote for him, please, read it before you do. It's the kind of book that triggers all kind of alarms in the head of anyone who has spend any amount of time working in a big organizations. This guy sound like the pure definition of the “pointy haired boss”. A legend in it's own head, more concerned with taking credit for anything positive that happens around him and put as much distance between him and anything going wrong, that actually sweat an agreement between two self-centered parties in congress. I usually don't care about the personal live of elected officials, it's fine with me if they hand 36 divorces and 3 affairs got high in college. That being said, if your kids don't talk to you and you are running for president, you don't have you priorities straight or you have more ambition than sense of responsibility. In any case, I don't want you running the country.

Ideally, I would like to see nominated John McCain in the Republican party and Barack Obama in the Democratic party. This will be perfect, since I would not have to worry about which candidate wins the election. I think either of them would make a good president.

While I'm not as enthusiastic about Senator McCain as I was in 2000 (back then he was my favorite), I still think he is a decent guy with a good sense of what is right and what is wrong and he is principled (in a good way). Yes, he has done some political contortionism with some issues since 2000 (and hence some of my lost enthusiasm), but given the stakes and the pressure to to appeal to the bases, I think he has done unusully well. He has taken unpopular stands on issues that he knew will make him loose support and possibly his bid for the White House, but issues he thought where important. I whitched he had spoke more loudly on some issues, but then again he did much better than almost anyone.

Finally, I like Senatur Obama for his pragmatism and ability to look at things in a non-partisan way. I like that he tryes to find solutions that could be implemented rather than perfect/dogmatic solutions.