POLITICAL COMMENTARY FROM NORTH OF THE BORDER
Theo Caldwell, National Post ( Canada )
Wednesday,Theo Caldwell, National Post ( Canada )
December 26, 2007
An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the
apparent perfection of one option or the unspeakable
awfulness of another makes a decision seem too easy,
it is human nature to become suspicious.
This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given
choice are raised. American voters know no greater
responsibility to their country and to the world
than to select their president wisely. While we do
not yet know who the Democrat and Republican
nominees will be, any combination of the leading
candidates from either party will make for the most
obvious choice put to American voters in a
generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any
business being president.
This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent
perfection among the Republican candidates than with
the intellectual and experiential paucity evinced by
the Democratic field. "Not ready for prime time,"
goes the vernacular, but this does not suffice to
describe how bad things are. Alongside Hillary
Clinton , add Barack Obama's kindergarten essays to
an already confused conversation about Dennis
Kucinich's UFO sightings, dueling celebrity
endorsements and who can be quickest to retreat from
America 's global conflict and raise taxes on the
American people, and it becomes clear that these are
profoundly unserious individuals.
To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish
and rhubarb on the Republican side (Ron Paul, call
your office), but even a cursory review of the
legislative and professional records of the leading
contenders from each party reveals a disparity akin
to adults competing with children.
For the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a
two-term mayor of New York City , turning a budget
deficit into a surplus and taming what was thought
to be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that, he
held the third-highest rank in the Reagan Justice
Department, obtaining over 4,000 convictions. Mitt
Romney, before serving as governor of Massachusetts ,
founded a venture capital firm that created billions
of dollars in shareholder value, and he then went on
to save the Salt Lake City Olympics. While much is
made of Mike Huckabee's history as a Baptist
minister, he was also a governor for more than a
decade and, while Arkansas is hardly a "cradle of
presidents," it has launched at least one previous
chief executive to national office. John McCain's
legislative and military career spans five decades,
with half that time having been spent in the
Congress. Even Fred Thompson, whose excess of
nonchalance has transformed his once-promising
campaign into nothing more than a theoretical poss-
ibility, has more experience in the U.S. Senate than
any of the leading Democratic candidates.
With just over one term as a Senator to her credit,
Hillary Clinton boasts the most extensive record of
the potential Democratic nominees. In that time,
Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative
accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately
for requesting $1-million from Congress for a museum
to commemorate Woodstock
Barack Obama is nearing the halfway point of his
first term in the Senate, having previously served
as an Illinois state legislator and, as Clinton has
correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run for
president since he first arrived in Washington .
Between calling for the invasion of Pakistan and
fumbling a simple question on driver's licenses for
illegal aliens, Obama has shown that he is not the
fellow to whom the nation ought to hike the nuclear
football.
John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the adage that the
American people will elect anyone to Congress --
once. From his $1,200 haircuts to his personal war
on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his
28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds
of preposterous lawsuits exploiting infant cerebral
palsy, Edwards is living proof that history can play
out as tragedy and farce simultaneously.
Forget for a moment all that you believe about
public policy. Discard your notions about taxes and
Iraq , free trade and crime, and consider solely the
experience of these two sets of candidates. Is there
any serious issue that you would prefer to entrust
to a person with the Democrats' experience, rather
than that of any of the Republicans?
Now consider the state of debate in each party.
While the Republicans compare tax proposals and the
best way to prosecute the War on Terror, Democrats
are divining the patterns and meaning of the glitter
and dried macaroni glued to the page of one of their
leading candidate's kindergarten projects.
Does this decision not become unsettlingly simple?
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