Super Tuesday

It's hard to avoid mentioning the race to have a real president again, since I spend so much of my time reading and thinking about it, so I figured I would lay out some basic opinions here before I head out to vote.

Disclaimer: I promise I won't delve into these topics too much or too often, unless enough people care to ask me to. Unwelcome opinions, especially on politics, are one of life's eternal annoyances.

GW BUSH: There is little that is advisable for me to say, since it accomplishes little, but I'll give it a short sentence. I believe that his father is ashamed of him, as he should be; I hope he lives long enough to be punished for the damage he has done this country; and one benefit of having a Democratic president come 2009 will be to wash away the stain of Rove/Cheney/the rest more thoroughly than getting another Republican, even a non-neocon one.

McCAIN: A solid candidate, though I disagree with a lot of what he says. He seems to at least understand that you have to cooperate to get anything done.

ROMNEY: Seems too slick for his own good, like Bill Clinton without his "good old boy" shtick. I believe McCain and the others are right in labeling him a flip-flopper, as I think anyone would who reviewed his record. It's one thing to change your mind in response to a changing world, but quite another to completely reinvent yourself when it's politically convenient (like Guiliani, as well as Hillary Clinton, to a lesser extent). It's a shame though, because it would be nice to have the widest host of palatable options possible for breaking the WASPy male strangehold on the American presidency.

RON PAUL: I'm still in saddened disbelief how discounted he is, compared to Huckabee and others who have dropped out in the past month. This man has a lot of truth to speak, and I don't understand (without resorting to severe pessimism and conspiracy theories) why he doesn't merit inclusion even at this point in the millions of discussions and analyses of the race, the issues, and the debates. Here's another person with whom I disagree on several issues, but who I greatly respect and who I want to hear from without having to search back alleys of information. People just don't want to hear about how many things have gone wrong in this country (diplomatically, militarily, and economically) all at once. They want to address one problem at a time whenever possible. Maybe that's it...

HUCKABEE: Not worth much discussion, since he'll be farther gone by tomorrow even more than he is today (West Virginia's results notwithstanding). The best thing to come out of his ill-advised candidacy is last night's Battle Royale between Conan O'Brien, Steven Colbert, and Jon Stewart.

CLINTON: I know I'm not the first person to say this, but I am all for a female president, but just not this one. I lump her in with Romney in the robotic, ineffective politician category, though she at least has stuck closer to her alienating Raving Liberal guns. I think her presidency could possibly ruin it for all future female candidates for another century, and I think at best she would be a return to politics as usual. We'd be back to the Clintons' shenanigans that stained the country before Bush shattered it into a million pieces. I think she would soon remind me why I didn't mind Bush's election so much back in 2000, naively figuring he would be innocuous and at least interesting. (It makes me almost as sad to think of my foolish mindset in those days as it does to think of the Bush presidency we got.)

OBAMA: I really wanted him to finish out his first term in the Senate, so we could all see what he does on a national stage, and to build National Politics credentials to satisfy those who require them. Since he went for it now, though, I was ready to be disenchanted. In the past year or so, I've only gotten more inspired at the idea of the clean slate he offers. That's not the only reason I support him, of course

So as I mentioned, I'm off to vote now, and if your state primary/caucus is also today, I certainly hope you do the same. Good luck to us all in 2009!