A presidential election year is always a hot time in the political parties. It is a time when candidates stand before a crowd of prospective voters and tell them why the voters should choose them over the other guy. They talk about their good judgment and the other guy’s poor judgment. The candidates talk about the things a crowd of voters might be interested in hearing when selecting a candidate. The candidates calculate what they need to say to get a precinct, a county or a state to vote for them.
Everyone knows that there is no connection between what a candidate says during a campaign and how they act after winning the election. The process is so cumbersome there is little accountability to the grass roots voters.
Certainly voters are a necessary component in the process, but they play a part only during the election season. Rarely do partisan elected officials put the interests of grass roots voters above any other in the process of allocating their allegiance. Partisan processes almost always make candidates beholding to the party first. Special interest groups that cover the whole spectrum of conservative to liberal causes constantly pressure parties and elected officials to listen to their pitch. Most send a check for the election fund along with a cause they support. “Just wanted to let you know that we support you, and oh by the way, this issue is really important to our members. Did you know there are umpteen thousand members in our group?”
Presidential primaries are a unique type of process because they are spread out over an extended period of time. The time alone gives the candidates a chance to focus their campaign patter on time sensitive issues as they travel from state to state. In addition, the demographic variety of different regions force candidates to balance things said in one to things they want to say in another.
During the primary process candidates from the same party are forced to distinguish the differences between themselves while at the same time they supposedly support the same party platform. The core values of a candidate are generally identified with one of the major parties; because everyone knows that they are the only choices we are given. In a partisan system, it is nearly impossible to have an agenda that favors the citizenry.
The political season gives us all an opportunity to compare a bunch of things. We compare the philosophies of one candidate to another, we compare the philosophies of one party to another, we compare a candidate to a party and we compare ourselves to both candidates and parties.
After all the comparing, we are thoroughly confused.
A candidate running for office that has never held elective position before is given great latitude in developing who and what he/she is in the political arena. We listen to their ideas about how they will make a difference after the election. We usually settle for candidates like this when we can not see a good reason to support an incumbent. For me, a past voting record is a good measure of what we can expect in the future for incumbents. Certainly there are occasions when elected officials vary from the original path, but it is the exception rather than the rule.
Now, the presidential primary season is over and the infighting within the parties is over. Candidates from each party cut each other to the bone until the party selection is made then everyone comes together under the party tent and profess their admiration and support for the other guy. “Those nasty things I said about you in the primary were not personal and I didn’t mean any of it. You are a great candidate and I’m with you 100%.” It doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican, they all do it. The primary process forces candidates to present themselves as the one best exemplifying the party values within the context of the times.
The general election is just the opposite. In the campaign for the general election, the candidates are required to restate their positions to better appeal to voters not affiliated with a party. The independent voters define the agenda in a general election since partisan voters rarely vote out of the party. Certainly some will, but generally, “dyed in the wool” partisans are blinded by the party rhetoric to the point where they can’t bring themselves to consider someone from the other team.
Candidates tend to come to the fence to offer the broadest appeal to the most voters. That causes problems with voters trying to figure out who to vote for. During the primary, it’s all about differences, then in the general election it’s all about similarities.
For me, I look at a voting record to decide. For me past is prologue. I look for how a candidate voted on issues for a period of time. That gives me confidence that a person has values he will stand by. Whether I agree with his politics or not, a record of voting and supporting issues over time gives me the confidence that I can predict future actions. This is a process our government uses to vet judicial candidates. How a judge ruled on cases over the years gives an observer some sense of how he will rule in the future.
In the political arena, having a record indicates that you have experience. If you have consistently supported an issue in the past, we can logically expect you to support similar issues in the future. Good or bad. If you have demonstrated character and leadership in the positions and votes, that’s good. If you have been a partisan butthead, you have to take credit for that too.
Candidates with a short record force us to look at other factors to help us decide. Personal things become more important when you have little to go on. Issues of character are considered more with less experienced candidates.
In elections where a political butthead incumbent is facing a novice, the novice is often considered the lesser of two evils.
This year, we have a presidential election with an experienced older guy on the Republican side and a charismatic inexperienced younger guy on the Democratic side.
For me, I have been a moderate all along and John McCain has been my preferred candidate since 2000. His record of voting demonstrates that he is not a party hack. I like that. His record in the Senate shows his ability to work in a bipartisan manner. He worked cooperatively with Democrats and Republicans to keep the government operating when the partisan buttheads melted down. Sure, there have been times when his position wasn’t the one I would have taken, but time and again I have respected his judgment on issues.
For the Democrat, I don’t have a lot of information to make a good analysis. Obama has been a member of the Senate for less than one term. He was a member of the Illinois State Senate for one term. His votes on issues have been consistently the most liberal of most members of the body. The lack of government voting record suggest that we look deeper into his personal life for insight.
That is where choices he makes about who he associates with, what church he attends and things like that become measuring devices.
Barak Obama does not have a record that builds confidence for moderate voters. His liberal record suggests a significant shift from expectations we had with Bush 2. And that is the problem most of us have today.
Bush was such a disappointment for folks in the middle, the suggestion that McCain would be a different kind of Republican is hard to believe in view of his support of the presidents agenda.
Voters were onboard with the vision laid out by Bush, he lost us on the execution. Bush did what the party wanted him to do. His past record should have given a good indication of his future and since he would never have to appease voters again, he reverted to character. The Bush we see is the real George Bush.
The challenge McCain faces is to articulate his vision for the country that allows him to do a primary election shape shift to separate himself from the president, but still appeal to voters that shared that vision.
McCain is a man of character and is willing to live and die by his record. That means something to me. I have an idea where he is coming from and where he wants to take our country based upon his record. I like that.
As a voter that tends to be in the middle, I support candidates that resist allegiance to a party first, but have a character that reflects their stand on issues based upon actions every day.
I think our country has not been well served by the Republicans on the national stage. They had the power and the ability to be good stewards of government after the long time control by the Democrats. The power trip was too much for them. In the end it was all about partisan gamesmanship. They were so full of themselves, they betrayed the voters without hesitation.
Having said that, I still think John McCain is the best choice for our president. At the time his party was acting like a spoiled rich kid, he did not just throw in the towel and give in to the party pressure to toe the line.
If Bush has poisoned the well for Republican candidates, that will be a heck of a price we all will pay when Obama leads us down a different path.
No Loss for Words 
Balancing High Energy Cost with What?
by Steve DanaI was listening to Dave Ross on KIRO recently and he was talking about the fact that left wingers oppose drilling for oil in American coastal regions for a variety of reasons, but one they cling to is the assertion that there is not a meaningful quantity of oil to be found if drilling is allowed.
In spite of the fact that Dave Ross and I are often on opposite sides of the political debate, I was pleased that he aggressively supported measures to exploit American resources first to nullify the argument that we face high energy costs because we are not allowed to search for and consume fossil resources in our own country. Both sides of the energy debate maintain that we are held hostage by the oil producing countries. It makes sense that we know how large our oil reserves are whether we drill for them or not. Then if we decide to pump our own reserves or consume someone else’s we will at least know if we have a fall-back position. Whether there is a price difference remains to be seen.
Common sense dictates that nobody intentionally develops products that are not cost competitive; who would buy them? If the price of oil is $60 or $80 per barrel it is still too cheap to make us look elsewhere very seriously. If the cost of alternative energy sources were translated into cost per barrel of oil, the most familiar ones would probably be priced at around $160 to $170 per barrel. That means that even paying $140 per barrel, energy is still cheaper with oil than domestic alternatives.
If you are a proponent of alternative energy, the next step in the logic says that if you can’t reduce the cost of alternative energy to be more competitive, you figure out how to increase the cost of the existing product. That way the comparison between “foreign” oil and trendy alternatives shows a lesser differential.
If you are a proponent of alternative energy and you don’t control the resources from an ownership standpoint, you work to limit access to them from a regulatory standpoint. If you limit the market supply, you increase the value of the product in the “pipeline”. No pun intended.
I think it would be clear to anyone that if you were a manufacturing company, you would want to be selling product at a price where you could make a killing and I think the international and domestic oil companies are doing just that. Who could blame a company for successfully doing what it is in business to do? Does it really matter to you whether the company screwing you is American or foreign? Do you feel somehow better knowing that it is OPEC that is transferring the resources from our country to theirs? Or would you feel better if you knew the price would be the same, but the money was going to American companies.
I believe that the reality is that domestic oil will not affect the price at the pump, but it will perhaps change who gets to collect the profits. Isn’t it easier hating a foreign country than an oil company you think of as American?
There seems to be a feeling that because we have developed a dependence on any and every oil supply available that the product should be affordable. Free market systems do not have any obligation to offer product anyone can afford. Check with Canadian or European consumers about the price of gas at the pump over the past fifty years. Ask them how affordable fuel is in their countries.
Our government manipulates market forces in many ways that do not benefit consumers. In most cases, the manipulation comes in the form of preferred treatment for some entity. Think about how your food bill went up when the government shifted the preferred treatment to companies who would “relieve our dependency on foreign oil supplies.”
If you combine the cost of your fuel and food and compare this year to last, you can see the serious effect of market manipulation. Biofuels will not represent even a hiccup on the fuel supply but the shift from feeding to fuel production will affect nearly everything you eat. Imagine what a loaf of bread would cost today if the government had not created an artificial market for grains.
Remember what I said about the price of alternative forms of energy and how you have to raise the price of oil to make the alternative look attractive. Biofuels don’t even look good if you just consider their part in the fuel supply. If you factor in the additional negatives on the food supply we are facing a disaster. Looking at all the impacts in total, manipulating the cost of the food supply to ease the energy problem will prove to be a significant error in judgment by our government.
World economies force us to play in arenas outside our comfort zone. Big business learned many years ago that consumers have a hunger for low priced goods. Consumers say they want “good quality” but are rarely willing to pay for it. What they really want is “cheap priced products that are of minimally acceptable quality.” Americans are so greedy for stuff that they sabotage their own country for lower priced goods. That will prove to be a strategic error in judgment at some point.
WTO and NAFTA have changed the way business works. There aren’t American companies like they used to be. Ownership is international and there is no patriotic mandate in their corporate goals. Shareholders are looking for profit; consumers are looking for low prices. Formerly American companies learned how to adapt by dumping American workers in favor of cheap Asian workers. The name on the product remained the same, but the strength of our economy shrank because our jobs and money left the country. If you believe that the company is American, think again. Time and again, American factories closed and American jobs were traded for cheaper consumer goods. Is that healthy?
Our government has been the back pocket of business since our country was formed. Nobody should be shocked to learn that today. What we can learn is how to put the interests of our country ahead of the interests of business. If we look at international trade and test whether it is in the best interest of our country to have cheap imports that fuel the economy of foreign countries or do we exchange the cheap imports for agreements that allow American companies to export goods to foreign countries. I guess we have to look at the value of the product exported to know whether the deals we make with the devil justify the price we pay.
For me, I am a proponent of America’s ability to be self sufficient and not dependent on foreign anything. I am a proponent of American workers and I know that we can’t have it both ways. In our state, we are one of the most dependent upon international trade so taking this position may not be particularly popular with some. Having access to international markets is important to our state, but it may not be best for our country.
I would prefer that our products be desired by foreign countries and the products stand on the competitiveness of our efficiencies. If we sacrifice our national interests to advance local interests, we take the risks of having neither.
If you know someone who lost a job because the company he worked for moved that job to a foreign country you know the impacts that creates. Are the jobs that are going away family wage earning jobs? Then think about the companies that benefit from liberal trade policies that allow us to export products instead of jobs. Are those saved jobs family wage earning jobs?
Our country is becoming increasingly more service oriented and less product oriented. We are finding that the public sector is growing as the private sector is withering. Public sector jobs produce nothing to fuel the economy. Private sector jobs create employment, products and services that pay for everything.
Where does all of this leave us? We need to explore our country for resources that allow us to choose whether we buy foreign goods rather than have no choice. We need to exploit technologies that enable us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Whether it is a global warming issue or not; reducing pollution is a good idea. We need to reduce the regulatory permitting process to facilitate construction of state of the art refineries and technologies that produce cleaner energy like nuclear power. There are responsible processes that acknowledge that the plants need to be built in ways that protect the interests of the majority of the public.
The interests of the majority are not necessarily the interests of either big business or environmental extremists. Common sense has to play a part in the discussion.
And that brings us back to Dave Ross who brings common sense to the masses one listener at a time.
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