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As the 2008 presidential election nears, an unending stream of alleged leaders begin posturing for president. Official candidates on the left comprise of such human travesties as Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich and Obama. Candidates on the right include Brownback, Cox, Giuliani, Hunter, McCain, Paul, Romney and Smith. This list of fifteen consists of: 10 lawyers, one businessman, one Navy Airman, one physician and two are simply non-noteworthy politicians.
This is it folks. This is the best America has to offer - lawyers. The next leader of the free world is going to come from this rabble of boring individuals, the majority of which could think of nothing better to do in life than to become officially licensed by the state to know how the government works - the highest achievement for any bureaucrat.
Whomever the next president may be, he or she is going in inherit an enormous mess. Frankly, we can do without someone plea-bargaining his or her way out of foreign entanglements.
And what about the other five? War hero and supposed maverick John McCain makes decisions based upon the prevailing political winds blowing at any given time. Maverick of what I ask? Swaggering like you own the place, but opening up to every flaccid opinion of the mob does not make one a maverick. It makes one a public whore.
Additionally, Mike Gravel, who is known chiefly for bringing the Pentagon Papers into the public record, is nothing more than a professional politician. The same goes for the former mayor of Cleveland Dennis Kucinich. Michael Smith works at Hewlett-Packard and if his presidency produces the same kind of crap as his company, then we can look forward to four years of viruses and crashes.
Republican Ron Paul, a licensed OB/GYN, signifies the only notable exception in this throng of pointless wonders. Compared to typical Democrats and Republicans, Paul's political views are truly unconventional and he often votes against his own party. He has continually voted against all Iraq war measures and the Patriot Act, he supports the abolition of federal income tax and is ardently pro-life. If Ron Paul is anything, he is consistently Ron Paul.
However, the candidates' wealth concerns me most. It has been suggested this will be the most expensive election in history and since many candidates are millionaires, I fear the presidency is an office reserved only for the wealthy.
Both sides are hypocritical about their wealth. The Democrats, for example, love to speak about two Americas, a rich and a poor one. I find it interesting, if not altogether humorous, that multi-millionaires Clinton and Edwards lecture the rich about not helping the poor with Edwards saying, "One America that does the work, another that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks." Edwards is worth anywhere from $12 million to $60 million dollars and documents from 2003 show Edwards used a loophole to avoid paying over $590,000 in Medicare taxes. For which America is he advocating?
Leading contenders Obama, McCain, Clinton and Giuliani are nothing more than rich career politicians, telling the country what it wants to hear while never offering any pragmatic solution. None of these four propose anything new. What has Clinton done for the state of New York, Obama for Illinois or McCain for Arizona that has made these places truly better before they procured their offices? Even Giuliani, who gets a great deal of credit for cleaning up New York, was mayor at a time when crime began to lessen in most major cities.
Our country needs leaders and not mavericks or another dynasty. I simply see no one capable of doing the job.
Write to Chris at caflook@bsu.edu
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