that other guy’s thoughts

Time for a break from my political insanity. Welcome to your Friday silliness:

Winston Chen is…totally stressing about finals.

2200 words of political opining, somebody pinch me!

I was trying to approach the project with the air of objectivity. I’ve been following the campaign since late last spring, I read websites and watch YouTube clips. The minutiae of the horse race doesn’t interest me as much as real campaign content. I know I’m more informed than the vast majority of the population, but I also feel like I’m removed enough beyond the cloud of 24-hour news coverage and 25-hour blog insanity to see a bit of the big picture.

My process was pretty simple, spend some time thinking about each candidate (sometimes an hour, sometimes 7 days) and try to imagine what the country would be like with him/her as president. I then wrote up my imagined best/worst realistic scenarios. “Realistic” being the opportune word. Anything is possible, so I focused on the ones that I could honestly say wouldn’t surprise me if they came to pass. This speaks nothing to their actual likelihood, I just need to ween the real crazy out (i.e. Guiliani becoming a pacifist, or Edwards abolishing the income tax.)

What I ended up with is pretty enlightening:

Rudy Guliani
Ceiling: Poor Man’s Harry Truman
Floor: The cloned offspring of J. Edgar Hoover and the Crazy General from Dr. Strangelove.

Mitt Romney
Ceiling: Teddy Roosevelt sans balls.
Floor: Meg Griffin with balls.

Mike Huckabee
Ceiling: (1/Jesse Jackson)^2
Floor: The 700 club.

John McCain
Ceiling: Dwight Eisenhower
Floor: William Henry Harrison with a better medical team.

Hillary Clinton
Ceiling: 97-00 Bill Clinton with more divisiveness and less sex.
Floor: 93-94 Bill Clinton with more divisiveness and less sex.

Barack Obama
Ceiling: JFK
Floor: Woodrow Wilson with a better speaking voice.

John Edwards
Ceiling: The inverted political equivalent of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Floor: Ulysses S. Grant without the gunplay.

Guliani has the lowest floor (by far) and Obama has the highest ceiling (also by far). McCain and Clinton are the most known quantities and have the least spread. No one’s floor is higher than anyone else’s ceiling, so there is no obvious winner or loser here.

My personal inkling is to rule out Guliani for his potential to end humanity, and Edwards for having a ceiling lower than Bag End. I’m also inclined to eliminate Romney, not for his specific ceiling or floor, but because in every conceivable scenario, he’s a pandering robot that nobody EVER feels comfortable trusting.

From there the Huckabee v. McCain battle seems more about different points of emphasis than genuine policy differences. That certain matters, but my crude evaluation methods can’t shed much light on that.

The fascinating match up is Clinton v. Obama. His ceiling is higher; her floor is higher. Clinton is much more of a known quantity. She has a personal toughness and is by all accounts, a very good Senator for the State of New York. She’s also a parsing, secretive, fence-sitting, poll-driven politician of the worst sort. She would be perfectly happy to win all her battles 51/49, and she’s not above any trick–dirty or otherwise–to get there. One needs only to look at her campaign’s recent passive-aggressive race-baiting to see that. However, she will win. There is too much drive and too much institutional power behind her to do anything but. She will pass laws, she will move forward, she will press the issues of her choosing. Some good things will undoubtedly come through with her unstoppable engine powering the white house.

Obama is the near antithesis of Clinton. He’s not a bulldog or a fighter. He doesn’t seem to have the will to twist arms and compel others to do his bidding. He could never actually take over the world. But that difference, as they say, is ALL the difference. There is no substantial policy difference between Obama and Clinton (or Edwards for that matter.) Sen Obama’s promise and potential is less about him, and more about what he brings out in others. He champions change, but not in a ‘I-hate-Dubya’ way. When he talks about change he’s not administration or policy, it’s much bigger. It’s about changing the conversation, moving beyond the many shades of the culture/counter-culture fight our country has been enduring for the last 40 years. Left vs. right, red vs. blue, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Moore, Moveon.org, and Ann Coulter; Those are the fruits of of this country’s self-inflicted battle. If it’s possible to take a step above them, Obama represents the best chance to do it.

The question in my mind is, “How likely is it that Obama makes that leap?”

The answer in my mind? “I have no freaking clue.”

John Edwards
What happened to him? He’s just not the happy go lucky positive message man I fell in love with 4 years ago. He seems to have fallen victim to Cacoethes Carpendi or ‘the compulsive habit of finding fault.’ If Clinton’s first instinct is to fix, and Obama’s is to understand; then Edwards’ is to blame. It doesn’t strike me as natural to his demeanor. Did ‘04 campaign really jade him that much? Now he’s pretty much willing to pick a fight with anything that moves. If you listen to him for an extended period of time you’ll discover than the corporations are ruining the world. They sit in their corporate towers, and make corporate money, being all corporation-y. Everybody else has to walk to school barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. I want that guy to be my lawyer, or my issue advocate, but I don’t want to give him 1st strike capability.

Best Case: I’ll be honest here. I’ve spent a full week trying to imagine a scenario that doesn’t foster open hostility among the factions of government, and I can’t see it. Edwards is too attached to his ultimate fighter persona to take a pacifying tone when he gets into office. The best I can come up with is this: He picks a couple of fights in the first couple of months, gets bitch-slapped around beltway, comes to his senses, and transforms into a southern populist.

Worst Case: Quixotically, John Edwards’ worst case is his public face. A president can’t simply fight his/her way to effectivity. Politics at every level requires persuasion, negotiation, and above all, compromise. The presidency may be the best possible example of this. Article II of our constitution gives the office exactly two unchecked (hard) powers; to be commander-and-chief of the military, and to issue pardons and reprieves. Everything else is achieved through soft powers (i.e. persuasion, negotiation, and compromise.) A president can only be as strong as his/her clout allows. And we know from 7 years of President Bush’s foreign policy that nobody respects a bully. This leaves an Edwards administration with 6 months of picking fights with everyone, followed by 3.5 years of nothing getting done because everybody hates John Edwards, followed by a backlash victory at the hands of some conciliatory bigot like Rick Santorum.

Ceiling: The inverted political equivalent of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Floor: Ulysses S. Grant without the gunplay.

Coming this week: Wrap-up edition, oh joy of joys!

Barack Obama
As far as I’m concerned, Obama has more upside than the rest of the field combined. He seems to be a dedicated civil servant as opposed to the masses of political ambition walking around Iowa and New Hampshire today. His mind works, he ponders questions longer and thinks deeper than anyone we’ve seen in a long time. He’s human, with all the faults and strengths that come with it. This campaign has told us that he’s also not the most patient man. When off guard and stressed, he can be snippy and dismissive. He’s an inconsistent campaigner. He has days when he recites a speech and spouts soundbites like every politician you’ve ever met. The key to Obama is his dichotomous nature. That’s what makes this ceiling/floor exercise so fascinating.

Best case is wide open. He is a wise, young, and unique man of mixed ethnicity and up-bringing. He’s a man of faith and family but holds them both dear and away from the outside world. He carries the introspection of George Washington and the hope of Thomas Jefferson. Is there anything more American than that? He can connect with people and speak to their aspirations like no on since Reagan. If he handles the power his popularity would bring, he may well end up with his face on a coin.

Worst case is that it’s all a ruse. Obama turns out to be an empty shirt with a ear for a phrase and a healthy sense of the moment. His inspiration doesn’t transfer to administration and speech by speech he sounds more aloof and desperate. Frustration begats more frustration and the pressure turns him from a leader to a lecturer. He slowly sinks desperately trying to tell the country how to be, instead of understanding it for what it is. This may be the saddest of all cases. The people elect a great promise, and get merely the inauspicious answer to a trivial pursuit question.

Ceiling: JFK (No kidding, I think the ceiling is that high.)
Floor: Woodrow Wilson with a better speaking voice.

Tomorrow (or whenever I finish writing it): John Edwards, and the Latin he shouldn’t have skipped over in law school.

Hillary Clinton
Here’s the deal: she doesn’t have experience. She’s been an elected official for total of 6 years. She’s the least self-made major party presidential candidate since Adlai Stevenson in 1952, probably longer than that. The only reason she’s part of the discussion is fact that she married a dude 30 years ago who later became president. Why is she the crowning achieve of feminism again? We’re kidding ourselves if we’re counting on her to be an independent thinker. She’s a product of the formidable political machine her husband built in his White House days. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. It’s possible that she is a brilliant, tough, thinker who put her husband’s career before hers out of love. That is certainly not something that should be held against her. A wide education of politics through osmosis should count for a little something too. We should want the best possible president, regardless of background.

Best Case: She takes her husband’s lessons learned and follows a pragmatic and moderate path. Bill was at his best when negotiating and compromising. By sticking to facts rather than ideologies, a generally centrist governing policy would serve the country well. She picks the fight she can win, mainly the causes the moderate and centrist electorate will get behind. She already has the ear and respect of many foreign leaders. It seems massively unfair, but personal relationships matter, even at the highest and most formal levels of interaction. She brings back the old band, everyone takes a dance down nostalgia lane, and cooler heads prevail.

Worst Case: She really is combative and hateful as her detractors predict. She takes her election as vindication and sets out to settle old scores. Policy decisions and power-brokering become a rehash of which beltway insider did what to whom 16 years ago. Democrats relish in the power grab, Republicans use her image as a rallying cry. Instead of a governing body, we get two camps scraping for command and affection of the public. Nothing of importance gets done, as nothing ever does when you play 15 rounds of ‘gotcha’ politics. The nation remains divided as ever, after more than 2 decades of neglect of those things that make our amalgam of peoples a single country, united by principle.

Ceiling: 97-00 Bill Clinton with more divisiveness and less sex.
Floor: 93-94 Bill Clinton with more divisiveness and less sex.

John McCain
McCain is the most centered and moderate candidate running in either party. His primary attribute is he refreshing and sadly unique honesty. He’s an Anti-politician politician. Which of course begs the question; who got screwed more by the racist robo-calling in South Carolina 8 years ago? McCain for getting smeared out of the the nomination, or the rest of the country for being saddled with Dubya? Unfortunately, he’s 71 now, which means he’d be 80 before the end of his 2nd term. It’s not fair, but the Presidency requires 20-hour days and non-stop flights around the globe to spar with 35-year-old nuke-toting bastards. It’s not an old man’s game.

Best Case: His experience as an inside-the-beltway but outside-the-establishment force lets him hit the ground running. His election and credibility buys him more time to make progress in Iraq, we get a quasi-pullback from the streets into the military bases and the body count drops. This puts the issue on the back burner with the electorate and allows McCain to push forward with a comprehensive immigration bill. The Democrats will have increased there majorities in both houses of congress but won’t have the Bush-Cheney demagoguery machine to polarize against. Healthy tension returns to D.C. with the occasional bought of bipartisan sanity.

Worst Case: Health problems limit McCain to 1 term, filtering out mid-terms and an early and open 2012 presidential race leaves roughly 18 months of effective governing without election cycles or lame-duck encroachment. His legislating experience doesn’t transfer quickly enough to effective administration so he suffers fits and false starts before getting the engine running. Instead of a force of nature in the White House, we get an astute and kindly grandfather-in-chief. He becomes the wise patriarch of the family, respected, but seldom listened to.

Ceiling: Dwight Eisenhower
Floor: William Henry Harrison with a better medical team.

Tomorrow: Democratic Party, thy name is toss up.

Mike Huckabee
The right reverend Huckabee made his living tending to the Lord’s flock. Now he wants to shepherd a country with more heathens than believers. He’s the candidate de jour of the religious right and for good reason. He appears to be clean as a whistle and pure in all the ways that matter to values voters. If personally morality is your be all, then end your search here. However, it’s entirely possible than he would lose the science fair to a 2nd grader. His capacity for independent fact-based thought is lacking to say the least.

Best Case: Huckabee’s leadership by example mantra sticks and people respond to a politician who speaks honestly too them without trepidation on contempt. He embraces the “compassion” in “compassionate conservatism” and could make actually progress ending the genocide in Africa. He ends the use of torture and restores a modicum of moral authority to the country. That way he doesn’t sound ridiculous when he ridicules other nations for wickedness.

Worst Case: Every Atheist, Agnostic, Jew, Muslim, Catholic, and Scientologist in the nation is massively alienated by Huckabee’s insinuation that to be American is to be Christian. The world continues to laugh at the backward American rednecks and there backwoods ways.

Ceiling: (1/Jesse Jackson)^2
Floor: The 700 club.

Tomorrow: John McCain and a delayed sense of voter’s remorse.

I’ve never been one to drink the Kool-Aid. But damn if he doesn’t sound like a leader, not just a politician.

…and yes, this is basically the same thing he was saying 4 years ago before anyone outside of the state of Illinois knew his name.

Mitt Romney
We honestly don’t know what Mitt Romney believes about anything, at all…ever. More than any other candidate his presidency would likely be ruled by whatever was popular at the time. Assuming news coverage reflects public sentiment, I’m guessing the first 100 days of the Romney administration include establishing a national celebrity rehab clinic and an internet registry to keep track of who got whom pregnant this week.

Best case is Romney turning his waffling demeanor into a semi-coherent centrist platform. He brokers cross-issue compromises between parties, legislation gets passed and the political parties have to spend the next few years searching for new stuff to denounce each other over. Without the constant rabble rousing, actually pressing matters of state can be addressed and we’re all the better for it.

Worst case is that Romney is too busy trying to be popular that he forgets his job is to lead. He compromises on anything, anywhere, anytime, and subsequently loses the respect of every human and higher-order primate in the western hemisphere. A split congress spends all their time fighting about whose fault their lack of progress is. Because with his Religion as a centerpiece of his campaign, every reporter in the known universe goes digging through the dirty laundry of the Mormon Church (polygamy and institutional racism are merely the beginning.) With the focus shifted off of the actual governing, bureaucracy begats more bureaucracy and corruption breeds in the dark. Oh happy day.

Ceiling: Teddy Roosevelt sans balls.
Floor: Meg Griffin with balls.

Tomorrow: Mike Huckabee, and the jokes keep on coming.””