That may be, but the question is, why can’t Democrats replicate that kind of personality cult?
Cite for that number. I’ve always heard it in the 5 digits.
I’ll remind you that Kennedy was in Vietnam, and he took some pretty big risks with Cuba.
“Yee Haw” is neither a policy nor a philosophy.
AIDS in Africa is a national security issue for the US.
Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan-era official recently wrote an anti-Bush screed called The Impostor; his conservative think tank employer promptly fired him.
It turns out that Bartlett doesn’t think Bush is a true conservative. A review by Kevin Drum is here. Quotable.
Why would any of us want to? Make anyone into a “god king” and he WILL let you down. When a leader is selected by “personality cult”, as the “great man who will fix everything”, when you trust anyone too much and give away too much power, it always ends badly. It all becomes “praise the leader, damn the facts, and death to to the opposition”. Questioning becomes treason. Thought becomes dangerous.
No thanks.
Sure, it’s personality cult - but on the left, not the right. The Left is a hell of a lot more obsessed with Bush than the Republicans are. Witness the last election, where the late campaign of “Anybody but Bush” being the main plank of the Democrats.
Bush simply hasn’t had the effect on the Republicans that, say, Reagan had, or that Kennedy had on Democrats. Bush is a lame duck, therefore we are going to get a load of articles between now and the beginning of the 2008 campaign about the future of the party. This doesn’t represent the repudiation of a personality cult; it is part of the normal political cycle.
Regards,
Shodan
Because we want to win elections?
Hmmm?
Yes, the Democrats want to win elections. But WHY do Democrats want to win elections? So they can put their values into action in government. That is, ideally, why anyone wants to hold public office. However, if you repudiate those values in action in order to win an election, then what good is winning the election? Your entire reason for running for office in that case was to get into office. Not to do good things while in office, not to help people while you’re in office, but to get into office. It becomes a giant game where who’s president and who runs Congress become no more than a way to keep score. And it’s absolutely awful for the US.
I don’t see us putting up someone who can pass the so-called “beer test” as necessarily repudiating our values. Values are seperate from personality.
I think you’re right. I tend to think of a personality cult as being FOR someone. But, it can work the other way too, in a sort of anti-cult. I never saw it that way before.
That should probably be:
Regards,
Shodan, who didn’t read the linked material.
this also shows how weak the democrats were in the last election cycle. usually there’s one person to rally behind. when dean came out after the iowa caucus, he looked like their neo this year. after he showed emotion (gasp!!) he shot himself in the foot. had there been one rallying force, it wouldn’t have been “anyone but bush”. oh, that slogan doesn’t sound bad, but upon reflection, it goes to show just how weak the deomcrats and their personalties were that year.
…and they still (almost) won.
Well, yes, if the campaign had united behind anyone who had an agenda or a set of new ideas, and the differing groups who make up the core constituency of the Democratic party could agree either before the primaries or during them - then it might not have been “anyone but Bush”. But that requires either a strong personality, or a strong agenda, and neither were present in 2004. And I am not quite sure why.
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating - 2004 should have been a cakewalk for the Democrats. Bush is not that strong a candidate, there was the Iraq war and the deficit and Social Security and so forth. And against Bush’s record there was a war hero, who could have been credible as an anti-war candidate.
And yet, they did worse in 2004 than in 2000. Bush got an absolute majority of the popular vote, which he was not able to do in 2000 (and Clinton was not able to do either in 1992 or 1996).
Is it going to be any better in 2008? Hilary looks to be your best bet, and she is trying hard to establish herself as a centrist. So maybe you have a stronger candidate. Although she is polarizing, to say the least, and starts from way back in terms of her negatives. Will she be able to come up with a solid agenda, and, more importantly, will the Democrats be able credibly to unite behind it? Are we going to take another whack at nationalized health care? It didn’t work in 1992; I see nothing to indicate it will be any different sixteen years later - same counter-arguments, IOW.
No, it should read
Regards,
Shodan, who doesn’t think the linked material is very accurate.
'04 SHOULD have been a cakewalk, you’re correct. no president has lost a campaign during a war. i think the war mentality really got to people’s heads.
hilary is definitely polarizing, but nobody’s really stepped up to be “that candidate”. aside from hilary and kerry, and perhaps dean, who else is there? on the flip side, the republicans aren’t very clear either. mccain? it certainly won’t be cheney. jeb bush?
it’s funny, i think this lack of a clear personality on EITHER side might speak to the power of government as a whole. unless there’s a specail personality that comes along, there isn’t anyone that can really be bigger than the system.
the only person that i can see that might come across and garner a party’s support is colin powell. what party would he run for, though? he’s got the war credentials, if that’s what you’re looking for…he was present during the iraq crisis, but showed some disgust at it, as well.
if a third party ever…and i mean EVER got their shit together to make a strong push and to get someone out there, now would be the time. of course, then you’ll have the same nader-dilemma from last election: how are the dems going to get votes from the republicans if the third party eats their votes? that scenario spells a slight victory for the republicans if support hasn’t wavered. fortunately (for democrats) bush has done PLENTY to make support in republicans waver. he’s powerful and rich enough to make the entire party cow down to his (mis labeled) brand of conservatism. that’s precisely the reason that you hear some true conservatives making hay of the bush; they’re distancing themselves already to find someone new that can excite true conservatives.
True, which is why Kerry should have been able to do better. He was a war hero. And yet, he was a weak enough candidate that it was clear he had no new ideas.
I think Kerry is a dead soldier (snicker) for the same reasons he failed in 2004. Dean never even made it thru the primaries last time, and he is doing his best to provide the Republicans with sound bites to blow him out of the water for the next ten years. And you are correct - the Democrats don’t have anyone else.
On the Republican side, again, I agree - there is no front runner. McCain? Maybe - he is pretty old, but that may not be the handicap now that it once was. And I have never heard anyone mention that they supported Jeb Bush in Republican circles. Why would they - because he is a Bush?
It won’t be Cheney, he has ruled himself out from the get-go. Condi Rice has said more than once that she isn’t interested in the Presidency, although I hope desperately she changes her mind. But I still suspect the Republican candidate in 2008 will be some Republican governor.
He also doesn’t want to be President, and I believe him - his wife has health issues and he doesn’t want to expose her to the kind of non-stop sniping she would have to endure.
I don’t see that so much as coming from a third party as from a new candidate. Hilary isn’t exactly new, but maybe her replacement would be, or whoever the Republicans run.
My ideal would be libertarian on social issues and die-hard conservative on defense and financial issues.
Well, Bush won twice with as much support from true conservatives as he got. I don’t see him imposing his will on a reluctant party. He is letting Congress have its head - both sides of the aisle want to spend money, and Bush is doing it - his biggest failing as President. That’s partly why we need a new candidate - Hilary might just want to take another shot at federalizing health care, which would send spending thru the fucking roof, and business as usual from the Republicans isn’t going to deal with Social Security and Medicare spending, which is out of control.
The deficit is, to my mind, the biggest issue we got. The lefties are obsessed with the war in Iraq, but whoever wins in 2008 will either have to have new ideas on how to resolve it (and “Bush lied, people died!” repeated ad nauseum is not a new idea) or simply continue along the course as we are now - let more elections happen, and do a phased withdrawal. I expect the war in Iraq to be a marginal issue come the next Presidential elections. If the Dems can’t be persuaded to relinquish that particular deceased equine, so much the worse for them.
Yes, the fringe fruitcakes on the extreme will want to make “federal prison for everyone connected with the Bush administration” a campaign plank, but that is just masturbation. If they won’t and the rest of the Dems can’t come up with some plausible suggestions on how to deal with real issues, they will lose. And rightly so.
Regards,
Shodan
how does the deficit fit in with the (soon to be?) debate about the deficit/spending? are you assuming we’re out of iraq by then and not having to pay for “it”, whatever “it” may be concerning iraq? i see a new thread coming from this…
Spending on Iraq contributes to the deficit, but it is by no means the cause of it.
Entitlement spending is the main cause of the deficit. Pulling out of Iraq immediately wouldn’t eliminate the deficit. (Cite, if you need one.) And I doubt that spending on Iraq is going to drop to zero anytime soon, if at all. But we have spent something like $400 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan over the last four years or so, which is less than one year’s worth of the overall deficit is projected to be.
What we need is probably a President who will force Congress to freeze spending. Tax increases (here we venture into opinion) will merely trigger new spending. We need someone like Newt Gingrich either as leader of Congress, or as President, who will force the budget to be balanced even if it causes a government shut down. Bush isn’t going to do that, the Republicans in Congress aren’t going to do that, and the Democrats aren’t even pretending they might. Filibuster a Supreme Court nominee, sure - actually address any of the looming problems of Social Security, the deficit, Medicare - not likely.
Regards,
Shodan
at the risk of sounding like a “not tough on defense” democrat, i’d propose and back a plan to cut defense spending. social security and medicare, however are two large elephants resting in the room. the plan to amend such things is going to become more and more urgent as the years get to this next election. medicare is a sham with their prescription benefit cards and their contracual inability to even haggle prices. i suppose a good plan would be to completely rewrite medicare, but isn’t that supposedly what we just did? we need a way to keep the drung companies out of the writing of such a bill if it were to be renegotiated again (which i don’t see coming at least before the next election). so freaking much money is spend on defense. spending that much encourages a degree of waste, in my opinion, as well as a culture of entitlement, which i fear the military might already suffer from now.
i suppose the way out of the medical quagmire would be to rewrite social security and medicare, but i liken it to the tax code. some argue for a flat tax, others merely want to close up loopholes. you can bet that if we rewrote the tax code to make it “more fair”, the lobbyists and the rich would be out in full force to keep loohpoles open/open up new and prettier ones. so, this tax change might end up being no change at all (at best) and at worst, it’d end up being an even more pathetic model of tax collection. essentially, isn’t that one of the primary functions of senate/senators? (to be tax collectors, that is)