Pieces of USA
I am thankful and relieved and elated about some of the things that happened last night. If Romney had won, I would have been worried. I would ahve been unhappy. I would have probably been launched into some sincere political activism, and that is extra bandwidth I don't have at the moment. I am happy that Obama gets a second term in which to learn from the first, and I have hopes that some of the things I don't like might turn around, while things he's broken ground on can be moved forward. I am at the same time sincerely sad for those of my acquaintance and family who believed that Obama would be horrible and were ready to accept anything else, regardless of how nonsensical their choices might seem. There was no good alternative presented, so therefore they had very few good options.
This lack of good options is what has me most concerned, though. We need a two-party system to be functional -- heck, I'd be good with more parties than that. But at least two parties have to show up with their A game to make that work. They have to know what the hell they're talking about. They have to have plans and decisions that are based in some form of reality, where there are numbers that actually make sense and plans that have some basis in what can actually be done. They have to agree on the basic reality in which we all live, even if they would move on that playing field in different ways... and we just didn't have that. Romney was never a realistic candidate because he honestly didn't have a plan and didn't have a point of view, and whenever he would come into contact with someone who wanted information, would instead say either what he believed would play well at that moment, to be taken back later, or that they didn't have to explain anything right now. What the hell kind of answer is that? And as for other party candidates, the problem is that their platforms are so polarized that they aren't in contact with reality either and don't have individuals who have the experience to serve as a real president with things like foreign policy and economics and such. They're effectively artifacts of a pre-Civil War political landscape, wherein the world was much more isolated and everyone was equally ill-prepared -- and that's not the way the world is anymore.
Honestly, if any of them had a real plan that would work, it wouldn't be that hard to get interest. If the numbers backed any of them, they could make arguments to get money. But in this ideologuic political landscape that is the 2000's, no one seems to believe that you have to know what you're doing to be president, that just sliding by is sufficient because you can get people who know that for you -- the thing is, that really doesn't work either. If you're afraid of real numbers, you can't be president. I just hope to god we continue to remember that after Obama is done.
This lack of good options is what has me most concerned, though. We need a two-party system to be functional -- heck, I'd be good with more parties than that. But at least two parties have to show up with their A game to make that work. They have to know what the hell they're talking about. They have to have plans and decisions that are based in some form of reality, where there are numbers that actually make sense and plans that have some basis in what can actually be done. They have to agree on the basic reality in which we all live, even if they would move on that playing field in different ways... and we just didn't have that. Romney was never a realistic candidate because he honestly didn't have a plan and didn't have a point of view, and whenever he would come into contact with someone who wanted information, would instead say either what he believed would play well at that moment, to be taken back later, or that they didn't have to explain anything right now. What the hell kind of answer is that? And as for other party candidates, the problem is that their platforms are so polarized that they aren't in contact with reality either and don't have individuals who have the experience to serve as a real president with things like foreign policy and economics and such. They're effectively artifacts of a pre-Civil War political landscape, wherein the world was much more isolated and everyone was equally ill-prepared -- and that's not the way the world is anymore.
Honestly, if any of them had a real plan that would work, it wouldn't be that hard to get interest. If the numbers backed any of them, they could make arguments to get money. But in this ideologuic political landscape that is the 2000's, no one seems to believe that you have to know what you're doing to be president, that just sliding by is sufficient because you can get people who know that for you -- the thing is, that really doesn't work either. If you're afraid of real numbers, you can't be president. I just hope to god we continue to remember that after Obama is done.