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A colleague pointed out to me, yesterday, this year’s glut of presidential endorsements. I mean, everybody, everybody is endorsing somebody. This is fun, and funny. What is an endorsement, really, other than publicly proclaiming who you’re voting for? A Kennedy endorsement is good, of course. A Chuck Norris endorsement, or one from Oprah, can get you some internet buzz. But why is the mayor of my city endorsing someone? Why are ministers holding press conferences after church to endorse someone?
Who are you endorsing? Go ahead, endorse someone. Put your weight behind the winning horse!
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Topic: Campaign 2008, WorldMagBlog |  |
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Pathetic tradeoff
There is a fever of interest in endorsements in the media becasue they don’t think much in terms of substance, nor do they want their viewers to focus on substance. It’s all about personalities, popularity, perception, celebrity, name-recognition and momentum. This is just one of many ways that the media tell us how to think (or rather, how to feel).
Not that my endorsement carries a lot of weight, but at this point I’ll have to endorse Dr. Paul. The rest of the candidates seem to lean too much toward Big Government.
Derek: An idealistic vote for Ron Paul is a vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, either of whom would give us much Bigger Government than either John McCain or Mitt Romney.
I am following Night Train’s lead and endorsing Luke the Cable Man.
Chas, is he related to Larry?
I endorse a truly conservative candida…..
Wait~! Where’d he go?
At this point, voting for Ron Paul sends about as much message as a write-in.
So, I’m endorsing a true conservative, a man who may actually seek the presidency in about 2020, Indiana Congressman Mike Pence.
Well fret no more, MIM!
I watched McCain on Leno last night, and why, he must have used the word “conservative” fifteen or so times to describe himself. So it must be true. Now mind you, he didn’t actually mention any conservative principles that he was committed to (I caught only one commitment of any kind during the interview - a promise to “get” bin Laden), but I tell you the mere mention of my favorite word just put my mind at ease.
Outkast, I think that at this point there are enough folks with your view that you won’t need to worry about him getting the GOP nomination, in which case your statement would only hold true if he continued to run on another party’s ticket.
I’m just saying that if I were to stand behind a candidate whose values most closely match mine, it would have to be him.
HSK: Go ahead, endorse someone. Put your weight behind the winning horse!
Frank: Those two statements are contradictory.
By the very definition of the word “endorse,” we don’t endorse somebody because we think they will win.
We endorse them because we think they’re the best person for the job (based on their principles, their abilities, etc.), regardless of whether we think they will win or not.
outkast (3): An idealistic vote for Ron Paul is a vote for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, either of whom would give us much Bigger Government than either John McCain or Mitt Romney.
Frank: Post-modernist horse puckey.
A vote for Paul is a vote for Paul.
Stick with it, Derek.
I’m sure Paul would not get the nomination, Derek. My point was that, if you vote idealistically for Ron Paul or write in Mike Pence or Alan Keyes or whomever, that would merely split the vote the same way as votes for Ross Perot helped Hillary’s husband get elected in ‘92.
…and Outkast will idealistically vote for “the lesser of two evils.” Great short term thinking, Outkast!
I think there’s a bit of confusion on this thread about “endorse” versus “vote”. Endorse connotates more than just a vote. HSK defined “endorse” as a public vote, but there’s more to it than *just* that. It also means you are confident in that candidate representing you, as far as your political values are concerned. On the other hand, a vote is just a vote. It can be a compromise as Outkast suggests. You don’t necessarily endorse the person you vote for, especially if your perfect candidate is not running.
I endorse Ron Paul. Outkast tells me not to vote for Ron Paul, which is fine and seems logical, but if he were to say “Don’t endorse Ron Paul”, that’s illogical because he doesn’t know how I want to be represented.
I endorse Alan Keyes. He is thoroughly pro-life and pro-Constitution. I have a conscience and a God to answer to, and I won’t vote according to mere pragmatism.
If Keyes is not on your state’s primary ballot, then I suggest you vote for Mike Huckabee for the same reasons, or write in Fred Thompson.
HARRISON: What is an endorsement, really, other than publicly proclaiming who you’re voting for?
An Evangelical shouldn’t need to ask. Christians share a knowledge of Christ. They attend church to enjoy a common knowledge of Christ. I know that you know that I know. . .
Endorsements have economic value as communal activites that channel emotion and political content. The fact that personage X stands beside candidate Y in front of an audience lets all the individuals know that everyone else knows. This isn’t just information. Itr’s a ceremonial acquisition of status by the candidate in the eyes of everyone else.
Hey, the Super Bowl is more than a football game!
I want to be endorsed.
You have mine. A beachcomber can make as good a president as a windsurfer can.
Mark,
Besides the basic three, what other qualifications can we meet?
Outkast: Perhaps voting for a third party or not-a-chance candidate in the general election is a throwaway, but in the primary, one votes for the one he likes best. Of course, one does that in the general as well. Conservatives staying home does more to give us a lousy slate than voting for third parties. Voting for third parties sends a message: give us a good candidate and we will vote for him. Give us RINO and we will vote third party.
Kyle A (15): I endorse Alan Keyes. He is thoroughly pro-life and pro-Constitution.
Frank: I was quite a Keyes fan several years back, when he had his radio show. I wrote him in on at least one presidential ballot, perhaps two.
But with his staunch support for our militaristic Middle-East meddling, there’s no way I could vote for him today.
IOW, he (like far too many of my fellow evangelical conservatives) is “pro-life” — as long as that life doesn’t have the misfortune of living under some Middle-Eastern tyrant. Then all bets are off.
Kyle A (15): I have a conscience and a God to answer to, and I won’t vote according to mere pragmatism.
Frank: Amen and amen.
PeterL (2),
Seconded.
Mark Roth for President? If I endorse you, can I be your Ambassador to a Spanish speaking country? Spain would be great, but I will settle for Costa Rica.
#31: Voting for “the lesser of two evils” is NOTidealistic, in any way, shape or form.
And I’ve yet to decide who I’d support in a Clinton/McCain (Clinton) race.
For sure it would not be a third-party candidate, though.
And Peter L, the caucus here in Iowa was held a few weeks ago. I’m not talking about primary votes anymore, but general election votes.
Whoops, “31″ should have been “13.” I’m a little dyslexic today.
Endorse me! What I’m running for I haven’t decided yet, but I do plan to run.
As for the presidential, you know where I am;
OBAMA!!!
It’s all about personalities, popularity, perception, celebrity, name-recognition
You mean like high school? People can leave high school but high school never leaves them.
And then there’s the quiet endorsement that speaks volumes: CASH:
latimesblogs.latimes. com/washington/2008/02/news-shocker-ro.html?cid=99529752
(Delete space between DOT and COM)
I endorse my checks to the utility companies!
No one else cares for my endorsement.
Outkast #34- Yes, Iowa was last month. But more than half the country is yet to vote in the primaries/caucuses. The more I study and hear what the candidates have to say, the more I think I am voting for Ron Paul this Tuesday. He may not have the nomination, but if enough of us Conservative Republicans vote for him in the primaries that remain, the more we will get the attention of the GOP powers that be.
Frank, you’ve almost persuaded me on Ron Paul, after all these months. He’s ahead of McCain, Romney, and Giuliani in my mind.
I’ve changed my endorsement for Luke the Cable Guy.
Mark Roth for President!
Now, that’s all the campaning I’m going to do.
I think it is a good idea to vote your conscience in a primary — it lets the party know what people are thinking. But I don’t think doing that on the general election is a good thing for the country. We can always let Congress know how we feel about legislation afterwards.
“I think it is a good idea to vote your conscience in a primary — it lets the party know what people are thinking. But I don’t think doing that on the general election is a good thing for the country.”
Clearly, this is a rather common sentiment. I think, in the long run, it is a very flawed position to take. Personally, I refuse to vote for someone who proposes pushing agendas that I disagree with left or right/republican or democrat. I will not vote the “lesser” of two evils. If it were McCain and Obama, I’m not even sure who would be worse…in the long run.
A serious candidate should have a solid esplanation and plan to address the problem of worldwide Islamist jihad. It is underhanded and deadly. We cannot pretend that it’s all our fault due to arrogant policies and that if we withdraw from the problem things will be fine. This is the position of Ron Paul and the Democrats and no one ever makes them answer this issue in a serious manner. Ron Paul blames us (I have listened to him do this in the debates over and over with extreme cynicism) for just about all the terrorism in the wold and that is profoundly irresponsible.
Life is too short for pretense.
I have been critical of McCain, but my problem with Ron Paul is that he is the polar opposite of McCain.
John McCain reaches across the aisle to get major leftist and deeply destructive bills and legislation passed. he also works to keep a lot of good legislation and good nominees off the floor so they cannot be voted on up or down.
To my knowledge, Ron Paul does not reach across to anyone to actually get things done. He seems to prefer the luxury of talk and theory. He can be a purist because he does not much traffic in the rough & tumple of actual politics.
What we need is neither of those candidates. We need a candidate who does share many of the conservative fiscal principles that Ron Paul articulates but who also knows how to get them into law and into political reality in a constructive and sincerely conservative manner.
I did early voting. Thompson having just dropped out, I voted for Paul.
But I’m not willing to “endorse” any of them–they all have huge flaws, as far as I’m concerned.
And if McCain wins, I won’t vote Republican, for the first time ever; I’ll vote third party.
Moveon.org has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president. They plan to mobilize 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states on behalf of Obama.
Rick Santorum has endorsed Republican Mitt Romney for president. Santorumentum! Feel it. Oooh.
The L.A. Times (the antithesis of the Republican party) has endorsed John McCain.
Laura Ingraham has endorsed Mitt Romney.
The N.Y. Times endorsed John McCain.
Rick Santorum gets it.
Joel Mark (35): A serious candidate should have a solid esplanation and plan to address the problem of worldwide Islamist jihad. It is underhanded and deadly. We cannot pretend that it’s all our fault due to arrogant policies and that if we withdraw from the problem things will be fine. This is the position of Ron Paul …
Frank: That is most definitely not the position of Ron Paul. Either you have misunderstood his position — an understandable error, given all the misrepresentation of it by his opponents — or you yourself are deliberately misrepresenting it.
Ron Paul blames the terrorists for attacking us. He stated this quite clearly several times, esp. in the early debates. Indeed, he voted to use military force against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
But he also understands that our (usually unjustified) meddling in far-reaching corners of the world — e.g., the overthrow of Mossadegh; or the use of Afghanis Muslims in a proxy war against the Soviets followed by our disowning of that country once the Soviets left, etc. — have borne unintended consequences, such as inflaming the anger of radical Islamists.
Our overseas meddling did not justify 9/11, and I repeat, Ron Paul has said as much.
But he’s also correct in saying that 9/11 should have made us realize that we can’t keep screwing with the stray dogs in the neighborhood and expect never to get bitten by one of them:
Ron Paul, the only one of the presidential candidates to come to Maine in the run-up to this weekends R caucuses. I didn’t get to go hear him at the U of Southern Maine on Monday but have been impressed with what I’ve heard and read about him, including a NYT magazine article from last July.
Frank,
I have listened to nearly every Republican debate and I think I have a sufficiently solid understandingf of Ron Paul’s position on the war and on jihadist terrorism.
I have listened to Ron Paul himself and he does blame our policies for the terrorist attacks. And he is dead wrong!
Ron Paul has suggested the elimination of the IRS, the CIA, the FBI and other government agencies within weeks of taking office. This is populism (bumper-stickers) but not realistic.
Frank in Phoenix,
I grant that Ron Paul makes a lot of sense on fiscal matters and is satisfying to listen to on several counts. But so was Jesse Ventura when he won the governor’s race in Minnesota a few years ago. And Ventura governed bery poorly and could not work with others.
But Ron Paul is worse than the Democrats on the war and on the problem of jihadist terror.
Frank,
I will say that, in the debates, Ron Paul is given to using populist sound bytes and applause lines with regard to the war on terror and they can be taken any number of ways, positively and negatively. More often than the others, it seemed, he got both cheers and boos. I took many of them negatively. Just my take, perhaps.
Endorse me!
Seriously, this cycle has been a real yyyaaawwwn!
I’m getting sleepy! I don’t have much confidence in the now narrowed crop of candidates. I was leaning toward Rudy (not because of Pat Robertson)and then Fred;McCain is the media poster child being staged for annhilation once nominated to usher the era of Chillary. Dr. Paul’s supporters are calling talk shows and making themselves and Paul look bad (is Paul accepting funds from Neo-Nazi’s?);Alan Keyes, well, lost my respect when I received a letter from him explaining the plight of the villified Randall Terry and as such was seeking funds to help Terry “get back on his feet” when contributions all but totally paid for a new Florida home!
Romney reminds me of Flipper and Mike Huckabee mirrors ‘W’ in an annoying way. He is not a conservative…I do not, however, doubt the Hucks faith.
I’m running for my life.
Pray for our country as we witness the most unusual election cycle of my lifetime!
JOEL MARK: But Ron Paul is worse than the Democrats on the war and on the problem of jihadist terror.
Better by far.
The worst thing you can do in the face of an irrational threat is get all emotional, while the best thing you can do is calculate. Is the chemo more dangerous than the cells you’d like to kill? You simply have to measure the aggression, the invasiveness, and the spread of the malignancy.
This is what we do about crime. Crime could kill us, but we could kill ourselves trying to eradicate it, so we’re content to control it with measures that deter (while making us all a bit sick with the side effects) and excise (which unfortunately are a little late).
Let’s not hurt ourselves worse than Al Qaeda can.
George Bush long ago retreated from the “war on Jihadist terror.” Don’t let his refusal to cut his losses in Iraq fool you — terror was the excuse not the cause of the invasion. Bush chose to let OBL get away, he chose to let Afghanistan go to seed and Pakistan to fester.
Don’t forget, Bush has abandoned the policy premises of his war on “Jihadist terror.” Remember the policy of “With Us or Against Us”? Gone. Remember the policy of “Premption”? Gone. Remember the policy of “Democracy Everywhere”? Gone. The policy we have now is “To Be Announced.” We’re going to have to Wait Another Six Months after the current interval of Another Six Months is over. John McCain says these great leaps forward in our military success will keep us there for 100 years.
Scroop Moth,
It’s not an “irrational threat” by any means.
Too many administrations prior to President Bush II failed to take terrorism as seriously as we should have. That’s why we are facing such a serious problem today.
In Iraq today they are cleaning up after the jihadists used two mentally retarded women to butcher over 70 innocent people and injuring up to 200 others. Such things are going on all over the world and will continue.
They are on a mission. We must have a counter mission and we must win.
You’re missing the point, Joel. GWB himself didn’t take terrorism seriously, and still doesn’t. In the beginning, he was worried about Star Wars. After 9/11, Bush went to Afghanistan, which started out well, but he quickly lost his train of thought, let go Al Qaida, and diverted life and treasure to other aims. Since becoming bogged down in something he didn’t plan on getting stuck in this long after “Mission Accomplished”, and being powerless to get out with his own dignity, Bush has abandoned all the successive policy rationales upon which he originally based his supposed war against terrorism, as explained above.
The reason we have a serious problem today is that Bush failed to take terrorism seriously in the first place, then scattered his attentions and got us into an even bigger problem in consequence. This is widely recognized by anyone who doesn’t worship the man.
P.S. Conservatives describe jihadism as a “suicide of reason,” an unthinking devotion to fanaticism. Faced with that kind of a movement, we can’t afford to give in to emotion, and start doing things for crazy reasons, which is what they want.
The Evangelical agenda is implicated in American militarism far too broadly for your alarms about an existential threat to be taken as anything other than a cry wolf. You cultural reactionaries — Evangelicals in particular — have been hollerin’ about one darn Armageddon or another for 50 years, and nobody should listen to you any more. It’s only for an election.
You are not being objective Scroop Moth. I don’t think you can be when it comes to George W. Bush. He is the first president to take terrorism seriously, though some might argue not seriously enough. But there is a realistic threat and i support addressing it.
Bush was not the first president to take terrorism seriously. Clinton, for one, took it seriously. Bush is the first president to take terrorism irrationally.
Words, Scroop Moth, don’t change reality.
Are you serious? Some believe that words made reality.
Consider the various models for “taking terrorism seriously.” Bush provides a classic model of preventive detention and coercive interrogation, the “Abu Graib” model. He rounded up 95,000 people right here in America because they were of Middle Eastern origin. None of them was ever charged with terrorism. Zero. You don’t fight terrorism by detaining people who aren’t terrorists. All you do is prove to the world that you’re willing to go crazy. Israel is another example — actually another set of examples. Israeli justices constantly tell their government the best way to fight terrorism is with one hand tied behind your back. That’s right, they say the best way to fight terrorism is to be a mensch, i.e., a democracy . Democracies are actually stronger with one hand tied behind their backs. Go figure lunatic those Israelis.
Sorry, Joel, I meant, “those lunatic Israelis.”
After I stated that I wanted to be endorsed, I got three posted-here replies.
MakeItMan asked: “Besides the basic three, what other qualifications can we meet?”
Earlier this evening I posted my answer here.
Then PeterL wrote: “Mark Roth for President? If I endorse you, can I be your Ambassador to a Spanish speaking country? Spain would be great, but I will settle for Costa Rica.”
I think we could easily work something out like that. Your credentials for such a job are surely at least as good as mine for President.
And Chas, bless his soul, announced to the world: “I’ve changed my endorsement for Luke the Cable Guy. Mark Roth for President! Now, that’s all the campaning I’m going to do.”
Thank you, sir! You’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Mark- At least I speak Spanish. Is that qualification enough?