Election 2008 Musings...

I'm not even seriously looking at this yet, but I do have a few idle thoughts that come from having to grit my teeth and listen to my extremely Democrat office-mate rant every time Bush clears his throat in front of a mike. She was at it again today, so I'm going to pass the savings on to you.

I don't see anyone there on either side with enough going for them that they could buck the last eight years. We need a statesman able to get the work done in a way we haven't seen in this country for a lot of years. Otherwise, the next president is going to be the moral equivalent of Gerald Ford, stuck going through the motions trying vainly to pick up after Nixon and Vietnam. It'll get us through, but I don't think we as a country should waste four years rescue floating.

With that context in mind, I want to talk about our two big voices: Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.

These two have a double-challenge. Once in office they will be fighting significant uphill battles just because of who/what they are, on top of trying to get the country back on it's feet. And both of them carry the hopes of two major minority groups who have never yet been represented in the White House.

I don't like Hillary. I'd love to see a female president. Just not her. I don't like her politics. I have serious doubts about her ability to fix the brutal slashing our rights and freedoms have taken these last eight years. Worse, I have serious doubts she'd want to based on her voting record and her history from Arkansas. She would be getting dropped right into the middle of the truly ugly foreign policy mess that's the aftermath of Iraq. And I'm sorry, but she's no Madeline Allbright. I'm not even going to touch the domestic front other than to say I've never seen anything from her that hasn't been short-sighted and woefully out of touch with real life. And I damned skippy don't want her as Command-in-Chief trying to mop up an inherited war.

I like what I've seen of Obama, but I feel like electing him his time around would waste him. We've got someone with real potential here to drive a foot in the door and give us a black President. And not only a black president, but a great one. He is a visionary who has the ability to get people going all across the aisle. But unless he's got a big yellow "S" on his undershirt, I don't see how he can deal with the situation this country is in and move ahead the way he's talking about. Especially if he tries to pull off both at once. And if he doesn't get too far with either agenda, he'll get crucified like Hoover. People are already trying to pull on him what they did to Dan Quayle (another waste, IMHO). It'll only get worse from here.

He's plenty young enough to wait four years in the Senate, gaining experience and demonstrating to the country so loudly even the thickest dunderhead can hear that he has what it takes to move this country forward. We just need someone else in the middle here to sort out the current mess and make moving forward possible again.

Do I know who the heck that could be? No. I just know I don't see a hat there in the ring that I think has any cattle behind it.