A SHALLOW GUIDE TO THE US PRESIDENTIAL RACE
(FOR PEOPLE WITH MOSTLY JUST A GLANCING INTEREST)
NO POLICIES, NO DEBATE — JUST PURE PERSONALITY AND PROFILE
OK, by the time you read this, it may all be narrowed down significantly. So while everyone's race is still alive, let's review the smorgasbord we've had for the past year already (and it's another year until the actual inauguration of the next president!!)
There hasn't been such a wide field to choose from on both sides since ... I think it's several decades, since this has happened. That's because the current Vice President, Dick Cheney, is such a tired old guy that he even has websites dedicated to regularly checking if he's dead yet. Usually it's the VP who has so much mojo he gets to prevent all the others in his party running for president; but not this time.
REPUBLICANS GRAND OLD PARTY INSERT ELEPHANT LOGO
First, these are the more interesting ones. There seems to be more headless-chicken action going on here, with barely any loyalty to the current President Bush at all. As if that was a surprise though (but my, how things have changed since 2004?)
Romney: This is the slick, tidy guy who was pretty much the only possibility for an "obvious" choice if you had to make a prediction all the way from a year ago. You may have heard he's a billionaire, and you may have heard he's the Mormon one; well it's the Mormon thing which everyone was guessing might get in his way, and yep, it's started to do that.
What's this guy really like? It's a bit like those Mormons on South Park actually. Seems less of a jerk than any of the others, and somehow has that rare gift of being able to avoid taking cheap shots, even when they're really tempting. He never gets defensive. So for that reason, he sometimes seems to be doing the whole thing properly and not treating it as a game or a joke when others do, and remembering how important it is.
Huckabee: This one is your nice, simple guy who goes to church and believes all the things you ought to believe. This brings with it all the expected modesty and politeness you'd expect, flanked by dogma. There's no room for argument, but you know where you stand.
Giuliani: In one go, he's a slimy bastard but he's had to work with so many other slimy bastards that he's truly pragmatic and actually knows how to get things done. He has a bullshit detector that can work a mile off because he's made so much of his own. He's a product of New York and all the pressures that this has given him. You can tell he's gone through some moral evolution over his lifetime, and I guess he now feels that his moral relativity has got developed and refined to a stage where it would be useful to the country and the world. He may well be right; but it isn't just his own forgiveness that he needs. A truly useful guy and a resource, just maybe not here, not now.
Thompson: Fred Thompson's a funny one — he's exactly what you get on TV, where he's acted the same kind of personality there. This is the sort of guy that will give you an unnecessarily severe home detention, and then tell you "tough shit" when you complain. People will probably see that in their gut feelings when they look at him, and it's likely they'll judge him on whether they see him on their side or not. On the upside, a harsh bastard can be good for you (sometimes) even when you don't want to admit it. On the downside, he has (sometimes) shown signs that he's not just old fashioned but also old, and has forgotten a few things or not grasped them from time to time.
Fred is enough of an icon, but not a serious threat, that he's probably going to end up getting the chance to run for VP. He also reminds me a lot of Dick Cheney, now I come to think of it.
(Picking the most likely top candidate is deliciously hard this time ... best to just sit back and watch).
McCain: He's like your cool grandad, who made lots of money and is super careful with it, but still gives awesome presents sometimes. Hard to predict, partly because he's clever but partly because he's got no choice — he's doing the chameleon thing with his policies this time (he ran in 2000) and, sort of like Kevin'07 and Peter Garrett, half the population secretly hope he's lying. He's a "friend of the show" with Jon Stewart's Daily Show — what does that tell you? All this means he's going to cop a lot of shit for being deceptive, but for completely different reasons than the others (I guess being a crypto-ANTI-fascist?)
Paul: Really really interesting. Ron Paul's originally from the Libertarian party (and he's jumped ship because, well, that's what you need to do in a country with no preferential voting). The concept is a bit hard to grasp from over here, but basically he's a cute old bloke stirring up all kinds of shit because he truly, honestly, deeply believes that government should not be doing 90% of the things it's doing. Not just Iraq, but everything. It's so old fashioned it's new-fashioned. He's also the only one who really talks about the motives of 9/11, and handles it like the Irish "Troubles" and not a medieval crusade (something which Giuliani also knows, but can't and won't admit, despite always citing London during the Blitz as a great example to follow). And here's the thing — Ron Paul is getting lots of young people on board, because the more you listen to him, the more his ideas seem to fit together quite tightly. He knows in his heart he has no chance, but wow, you can tell he's having the time of his life. You can also tell he's the ONLY one on the stage with the others, who is being 110% honest with you. This guy is kind of like the uncle or grandfather who visits you at the busy family Christmas, and talks to you alone for an hour to let you in on the things none of your other family members will ever tell you.
If anything, Ron Paul is like the old schizo guy babbling at you in the street ... but then you catch a few words he's said and you've got that horrible feeling he really knows how the world works and is desperately trying to tell you.
DEMOCRATS (NOT THE ONES WHO USED TO BE IN AUSTRALIA) INSERT DONKEY LOGO
Due mostly to the express-train failure of the Bush administration, the voting that goes on here is pretty much known to be important and pre-selecting the guy who goes on to the White House.
Edwards: Look he's just here because Bush is going to lose and he's from the other side. The fact that he ran for VP last time, and that the loss wasn't actually because of him, is just a bonus. He also looks pretty good, and his ideas are good too. And dammit, he works the campaign HARD — the other day he gave speeches and conferences for 36 hours straight, and still looked all right a few days later. He's a good candidate, he's sweet, he's nice, but we all know he's going to end up on the VP ticket again.
Bill Richardson: Token jolly fat guy — proving that not all the white males in the Democratic candidates' race look like a Kennedy. Don't feel sorry for him; he's got a governor's job he can go back to, next week.
Hillary: This is getting weird. You've probably seen her a lot already — just like your bossy schoolteacher yelling at you the facts you need to learn, while you have to write them down for dictation. So what's happened now is that it seems a year is such a long time in politics (even when you're not even in politics, technically), that it can turn things 180º in such a jaw-dropping way. It's hard to remember, but around Christmas / New Year 12 months ago, there was loads of speculation and genuine anticipation for Hillary to kick off the 2-year roadtrip + cocktail party that would see her dance in a very curved line to the White House. Maybe the hesitation about her personality unpopularity has simply turned into a realisation of her personality unpopularity? Yes, the whole idea of a woman running the country is still a cool one; and hell yeah getting Bill Clinton back in the White House bedroom is definitely still cool; just getting to hear him declared First Man could be worth it alone. It's just that it turns out she isn't the perfect, um, person. It probably has a lot, or maybe everything, to do with the "audacity" of the alternative:
Obama: Some kind of mild-mannered genius — now listen carefully; it's like a young Bill Cosby, about to teach you a lesson you're going to be glad to hear — who also ticks a massive "Minorities" box. Unbelievable for this country, but they said that everything that's wrong with America can be fixed by what's right with America. He certainly has mentioned a lot of ideas you only normally hear from people (whinging?) outside America. This is a guy who's name alone rhymes with Iraq, has Saddam's last name in the middle, and the surname often gets confused with the country's Public Enemy #1. And even then, those jokes have disappeared ages ago now. It's probably because Bush is so shit that Obama's going so well now — any other year, and it'd be Edwards and Hillary getting a good run. He gives off an air of complete honesty, like Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee but without the radicalism or fundamentalism. The weirdness and unfamiliarity that he seemed to give out earlier on, is still there but now seems to have transformed into some kind of elusive antidote that the world needs; unscrambling an egg is always much harder than the other way around, but if anyone can turn the messy War of Terror from a 50 year mess into a 20 year mess, it would be him.
CK.
