Third Party & Independents: Archives

All I know about George Bush is that he has a pleasant personality, and that’s enough for me. Not like Mr. Frowny Face. Go Bush!

While personality of a candidate is not the most salient issue, it does have some impact. For instance, Reagan’s personality allowed him to persuade people to his point of view, and the steadfast optimism of his personality allowed him to stay the course even when he was opposed.

I have not seen this kind of steadfastness in John Kerry, while many would say that George Bush has a surfeit of steadfastness that makes him inflexible. As personality traits, these can show us some of what we can expect from a president, and in that way, they are important. But far more important is where they stand on the actual issues.

The central common Republocrate agenda is policy ommision and deception. We need third parties to invigorate policy debate. Unfortunately, Republocrates have learned to prevent their rise by pretending to embrace third party policies long enough to split their votes and then return to business as usual. Big money for Republican lies drive perceptions and Democrates usually offer ineffective defensive responses. The media is the message. I know several people who decided against Gore when he invaded Bush’s space during those fake debates. Bush pretended to hold popular views similar to Democrates and did the opposite after the election. While lying his head off, Bush projected a calm strength. Personality matters more in TV and radioland than facts or policies.

Well Bush actually did adopt some of the worst traits of the Democrats into his own personna: wasteful spending, appeasing enemy nations (e.g., Saudi Arabia), and lying, to name three.

And Kerry has actually moved to the right of Bush (middle class tax cut, NOT appeasing the oil-enriched enablers of terrorism, and at least talking the talk of deficit reduction), making it ideologically easier for conservatives to jump ship this time around. The only former Republicans I know who are still voting Bush are of the most absolutely automatonic sort, who don’t even want to HEAR about the issues, let alone debate them.

I have a friend from Atlanta who used to be just about a southern American version of Margaret Thatcher, or perhaps William F. Buckley in drag, but about halfway through the Bush administration she lost her corporate job and couldn’t qualify for any form of benefits (e.g., Medicaid). Living hand-to-mouth from church charities, now, although still a conservative at heart, she’s campaigning for Kerry.

Not a day goes by that I forget how better off I am than most people outside America. Even when I’m unemployed (like now) I usually have enough money in the bank to get by until I find anotehr job. I look at the majority of America with their 2nd, 3rd (and incredibly, 4th) mortgages on their homes and wonder where all that money has gone. These are people who have put themselves way, way, way into debt in order to finance the lifestyle they grew accustomed to over the past 40 years. The average American today does not know what it was like to live in the 1930s during the Great Depression, or the kinds of sacrifices and cutbacks made in order to finance World War II.

I fear that it will take a decade-long or generation-long event like the Great Depression to wake up this country and actually make long-term change. Unfortunately, I think the only things that could bring about something that catastrophic is a nuclear attack on several of America’s cities and/or the decline of the Dollar to the point where it is worth half of what it’s worth today.