Thoughts on the Candidates

My 2 cents is free...

Mitt Romney. Thank god this guy won't be president. If the presidency were automatically awarded to the smarmiest, phoniest candidate, he'd be president for life. I mean, they'd have to repeal the 22nd Amendment. Is there an issue he hasn't reversed himself on to pander to the right wing? The most telling moment of the campaign, for me, was when Mike Huckabee said that President Bush had a "go-it-alone" foreign policy, and Romney went nuts. Now, saying that Bush has a "go-it-alone" foreign policy is a simple, plainly obvious, noncontroversial descriptive statement akin to "the sky is blue," that people in both parties agree with. Romney, in a transparent attempt to appeal to the GOP base, pretended that it was treason and actually demanded that Huckabee apologize to the president. It was phony and cloying and sycophantic, all rolled into one, and that about sums up Mitt Romney. And don't get me started on candidates who promise to run government "like a business": it's either stupidity or disingenuousness, and the fact that, with Romney, it's clearly the latter doesn't help him.

Mike Huckabee. How could you not like him? Maybe because he's an evangelical nutjob who doesn't believe in evolution, and whose success is based on the support of other nutjobs? Hmmm ... No, I still like him. He's just likable! Of course, if he actually became president, we'd all be in huge trouble (until the rapture comes, anyway). But, what is it about Hope, Arkansas that produces politicians that can screw you over and leave you smiling afterwards?

John McCain. He's, by far, the Republicans' best candidate this year, but that's sort of like saying that the construction worker was, by far, the most heterosexual of the Village People. For those of you who are worried that McCain is going to win the general election, let me point out a few things about him:

1. He's old.
2. Really old.
3. The two biggest issues of the election are likely to be the economy and Iraq, and he's hugely vulnerable on both.
4. Republicans' feelings about him range between dislike and loathing.
5. To unite the party, he's going to have to pick some lunatic as his running mate, a choice that I suspect just may be abnormally solvent as an issue this year (see: points 1 and 2).

HRC. Man, if you just watched TV, you'd think that nobody likes this woman. Certainly the news media are almost unanimously against her. After she lost Iowa, the major networks hit her in the head with a shovel and had her buried under three feet of dirt before she won New Hampshire, climbing out of the grave, either Lazarus-like or zombie-like, depending on your point of view, and has walked among us ever since. Now that she's teetering on the edge again, they're poised to bury her for good. Except that she's still up by 20 in Ohio. Oops.

Barack Obama. I've got to admit, I'm on this bandwagon. What a phenomenon this guy as been. He captured lightning in a bottle at the 2004 Democratic convention, and has managed to keep the lid on. People love him. It's actually trendy to volunteer for his campaign (and, talk about a generational divide, nearly everyone I know is backing him). My sister canvassed for him, and I went with her to the campaign election night party in Hollywood. Normally, political activists appear -- how can I put this gently -- sort of nerdy and weird-looking, and they're old. This group looked like the cast of, I don't know, The OC, except more diverse and less out-of-date. But he seems to really bring a lot of traditionally excluded people, young people and others, into the process. It bothers me some that he's so inexperienced, and that his church is on friendly terms with noted bigot Louis Farrakhan. But, in his brief time in office, he's been right about just about everything, and the idea that he's an anti-semite doesn't ring true. This almost feels like a campaign of destiny, but there's also an Icarus-type feel about it: What will happen if and when the news media fall out of love with him and start shining bright light on him?