john mccain
- strengths: most experienced, seasoned insider, war hero, reputation as a straight shooter and bipartisan coalition-builder, stalwart in the war against terror.
- fatal flaws: despised as a turncoat and closet liberal by his own party's base (even rush limbaugh hates him); seen as old, out-of-touch and a probable continuation of the bush administration by most everybody else.
- strengths: smart, accomplished, god-fearing, self-made man, superb executive, grasp of world economy, reputation as problem-solver, impeccable personal and business history, great hair, profile fit for a coin, picture-postcard family.
- fatal flaws: mormon, branded as untrustworthy by left and right alike due to blatant and unconvincing shape-shifting from massachusetts social-progressive to red-state conservative, mormon, off-putting elitist persona--and did i mention his religion?
and now, the democrats:
barack obama
- strengths: smart, sexy (around here, he's barack obaby), accomplished, idealistic, passionate, seen as anti-iraq-war visionary, articulate sweet-talker, charismatic as all get-out, great wife and kids--and that momentum.
- fatal flaws: black, young, scary-inexperienced, unproven, unseasoned--and that name (especially the middle one).
- strengths: smart, seasoned, powerful, policy-savvy, husband's legacy, high profile, inevitability factor.
- fatal flaws: female, alienating persona, husband's demagoguery, the fact that she's hillary clinton.
and his name is al gore.
6 comments:
Ron Paul 2008 !
Okay yes so he'll never win even though he's everything America needs .
I'll vote for Romney even if he is a politician at heart . It's better than voting for a kaffir or hillary .
Al Gore?
You set us up and that is the punch line?
Al Gore may or may not make a good President, but he isn't running.
This is not the papacy where you can get elected even though you profess not to want the job. Running for the Presidency means slogging through Iowa and New Hampshire in the dead of Winter on a few hours of sleep each night for days on end. You have to not only say you want it, you have to show you want it.
Al Gore may want the Presidency. But he doesn't want to run for the Presidency. Like it or not, that is what our modern system of picking a president has become.
And Al isn't on the list.
Hmmm...
Interesting take on each of the four remaining contenders.
What you are missing is that each of these contenders is not being assessed in the abstract. They are each being assessed in comparison.
So Romney and McCain and Obama and Clinton are going at it.
I think that McCain is a much stronger candidate against Obama than against Clinton and that Romney is a much better candidate against Obama than Clinton (or vice-versa for the Dems).
c'mon, byzantine boy--with such comments, you're doing nothing but perpetuating the stereotype held by many that ron paul supporters are all closet racists.
politicalevolution: my point was, never have i seen a race in which each of the major candidates on both sides had such clear-cut, potentially dealbreaking electibility issues--to the degree that someone like al gore looks like a shoo-in by comparison.
spiffyheart: of course you're right--while for simplicity's sake i looked at each candidate in isolation, it'll be very interesting to see how their individual flaws and strengths play off against one another when the final match-up is determined--but i'm willing to bet that, for more people than ever before, this time it's gonna come down to a choice between which candidate scares 'em the least.
Scares them the least? Hmmm...I think you are sounding overly inside baseball. One of the great ironies of the Clinton years is that the average voter never could understand the visceral hatred so many Republicans had for the Clintons.
I do think you are on to something that each of the remaining candidates have fatal flaws -- glass jaws in the words of one commentator. At the same time, I think that the now likely McCain/Clinton match up is probably the best for the Democrats.
Let me be contrarian about that. Obama's poll numbers in the head to head match ups have fallen from the sky high wins they were months ago to much more competitive.
Clinton is a known entity. Her negatives really aren't going to rise too much -- and in a Democratic year she will do better than a lot of the Republicans are betting. She proved that in her Senate race in New York. I really think she is by far the best campaigner. Obama is the best speaker, but that is not campaigning...and he wouldn't even shake Hillary's hand.
??? I thought you HATED Al Gore!
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