Questions to be answered:
1. How are you feeling about the current election cycle? Hopeful? Fearful? Angry? Frustrated? Good? Why?
2. In your opinion, can the USA elect the right person to be President in November?
3. What are your primary interests in who gets elected? Why?
Note that the straw poll allows members to change their vote if they change their mind.
- Frustrated.
I find the paucity of in depth proposals and clear remarks transcend the point of being merely annoying for they force me to consider what the speakers, the candidates in this case, may or may not have meant, and in turn looking, even if just cursorily, down multiple avenues to determine, since what they truly meant -- in terms of means and modes of achieving the ends they identify -- isn't clear. While I'm able to do that, I should not be made to "work that hard" to select for whom to cast my vote.
Angry
I'm angry over the complete ignorance of basic economic principles issuing from the mouths of candidates and their supporters.
Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer and philosopher, called economics "the dismal science" in reference to Thomas Malthus, that lugubrious economist who claimed humanity was trapped in a world where population growth would always strain natural resources and bring widespread misery. He labeled the science "dismal" when writing about slavery in the West Indies. White plantation owners, he said, ought to force black plantation workers to be their servants. Economics, somewhat inconveniently for Carlyle, didn't offer a hearty defense of slavery. Instead, the rules of supply and demand argued for "letting men alone" rather than thrashing them with whips for not being servile. Accordingly, Carlyle bashed political economy as "a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing [science]. What he found dismal about economics was that for as much as he wanted to espouse and encourage one mode of behavior, economic principles clearly indicated that what he wanted to propone was at odds with economic efficiency and the ideal allocation of resources. Thus making economics the dismal science.
There's no denying that economics foretells a variety of depressing outcomes -- e.g., globalization killing manufacturing jobs in places where the cost of labor is comparatively expensive -- for individuals, businesses and nations that find themselves in a changing world, a world, and the changes, they themselves wrought. Faced with the economic realities, they resort to what boils down to simple resistance to change, nostalgia. Moreover, they present and frame "the problem" as being the loss or decline of "this or that" rather than as what it truly is: their unwillingness to find means of prospering under the new paradigm they created.
Workers demanded higher wages. Well, they got them, but they did so in a time when it was still more cost effective for employers to pay the higher wage than to assume the risks accompanying distant labor forces. Now "the problem" is that manufacturers have sought lower wage workers, those higher wage workers lost their jobs, refused to move to where the factory did and refused to acquire new skills.
Well, I'm sorry, but the problem is not that companies have offshored their production facilities. The problem, the thing that caused the current state of affairs, is that people and nations took a short term view and failed to consider the full economic impact of what they demanded and received.
"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
-- Murray N. Rothbard
- No, because the person whom I think may be the right person isn't running for the office.
- The thing I look for most in a candidate is unwavering integrity and ethical standards. I look for that above all else because while the approach a candidate prefers may not be the one I prefer, if I can trust that they will do (or attempt to) as they promise during their campaign, I can plan my life accordingly, and in so doing, thrive. I judge a person's integrity by the way they communicate. People who dialectically discuss the issues and clearly identify their personal stance on them as well strike me as being of the greatest degree of integrity. Those who do not are of varying lesser degrees of it.
The second thing I look for among candidates for elected office is the extent to which they embrace the principle of noblesse oblige. I prefer candidates who demonstrate that they will push for policies that, although they may be personally disadvantageous to themselves and others who are similarly situated, are what is best for most of the citizenry.
The third thing I seek in a would be elected officials is adherence to a set of principles that are rigorous to apply at all levels of the decision making spectrum. For example, let's say one's principles instruct that we not ban or constrain access to firearms in part (1) because the rights in the Bill of Rights are among those considered inalienable and (2) because they are needed for safety. Well, that principle would dictate that it's the situation, not the gun, that must change for one to abandon that principle. Holding true to that principle, one would not deny anyone, be they a U.S. citizen or not, access to any size of gun or weapon, including a nuclear or other very powerful "gun" because such devices are merely larger and more powerful guns and because an inalienable right is a right all are due regardless of the nation they belong to.
While I may or may not agree with one's principles on that matter, I do expect one to either live by the pros and cons of it, or I expect one to discard it and develop a more robust set principles. People who demonstrate the willingness and ability to do that, in other words, people who show their lack of great hubris, are the people whom I'm willing to elect to public service.
What I fully abhor and eschew is candidates who assert "such and such" is what is best, and fail to present cogently why they've come to that conclusion. The Pontiff, the so-called Vicar of Christ, can do that sort of thing on some matters; my President cannot do it for any.
Explanation of links, in order:
- Discussion of Carlyle's coining of the phrase "dismal science" in connection with economics.
- Discussion of the meaning and context of the term noblesse oblige.
- Discussion of the nature and extent to which Papal statements can and cannot be construed as infallible.
Thank you for the time, effort, and thought that went into this post though
I would guess only a fraction of even our most highly educated USMB members will probably read the whole thing as it sometimes take too much time to decipher the more detailed posts.
Condensing it all down for me, I agree that no candidate will meet all the personal wishes and standards for anybody. The best we can do is choose the one who is most closely aligned with our values and beliefs about
what is the right thing to do.
Red:
Perhaps I've too closely read your statement, and if so, what I'm about to write may not be applicable.
Truly, I'm less concerned with what a (would be) policymaker thinks is the right thing to do than I am with how s/he goes about presenting it to me/us. Clearly there are some things that can be boiled down to being objectively right or wrong, but I don't find that most public policy matters fall into that category. Similarly, there are multiple "ways to skin a cat." Some get the job done faster, others more slowly, but all potentially viable approaches have their pros and cons.
Regardless of a Presidential aspirant's means, I doubt any of them have foul intentions in mind, ditto for the ends they seek. I grant even that much benefit of the doubt to the ones whom I least prefer.
Pink:
"Dismay" was not among the emotions about which you asked in question #1, but it's definitely what I feel about nature and content of American political discourse as we see it today. Largely, I believe the cause is what I refer to as the "twitterization" of discourse in general, that is, the general public's demand for, on nearly all occasions, sound bites and/or slogans over comprehensive expression.
With all the personal efficiency boosters and nearly limitless access to information we have today and that our forebears lacked, I am befuddled why the substance and content of political debate is at the very least no better than it was in the preceding centuries. Moreover, I have to ask, "If a sound bite, slogan or tweet is sufficient, why on Earth do we bother with paying for as much public education as we do?"
The typical eighth grader can make sense of the content of a tweet, and effectively no level of education is needed if one is willing to unquestioningly accept the word of a political party on what be the best, okay and worst ends and means to seek/apply. Yet, as a polity, we allow our candidates to deliver their messages in bits and bites akin in content to the messages we teach our children.
The tweets and slogans political office aspirants give us have more in common with the instructions and pronouncements we make to our kids than they do with cogently presented persuasive arguments. One may instruct one's child not to talk to strangers or not accept things from strangers. As adults we have learned enough to know when it's reasonably safe, or desirable, to talk to strangers. Even as no minor may vote, politicians communicate with the electorate as though children we be.
While I find that insulting, I have to assume that they do so for good reason. The only plausible reason - the only one devoid of affrontery -- is because the electorate truly is juvenile in its willingness and actual handling of complex matters. That that is the only plausible reason for their approach to delivering political messages is, in some ways, even more disheartening than is the puerility of the messages and delivery itself.
Blue:
You're welcome.
