[MD] A Confusion of Weasels

[Matt Kundert]

Dan said:
I don't know about your side of the pond but here in the US we seem 
to be swinging to the right again. It  is interesting how we seem to 
alternately elect leaders that are either brilliant thinkers (Bill Clinton, 
Barrack Obama) or complete nincompoops (George Bush, George 
Bush). Now the right is looking at the likes of Sarah Palin, Tim 
Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich as possible presidential candidates next 
year. Kind of scary when you think about it. But, this too shall pass...

Matt:
I don't talk about politics much, but my perception is that Bush, Sr. 
was at least as smart as Clinton, though neither one had the 
visionary scope of Obama (so saying Clinton is a brilliant _thinker_ 
seems wrong, though he was a brilliant political tactician).  Bush, Jr. 
isn't the obvious idiot that Palin is (but God, who is?), but he was 
very lazy and incurious, which are very bad qualities for an 
executive.  The closest analogue to Bush, Jr. isn't his dad, but rather 
Reagan--he was smart, but neither that smart nor discerning, and a 
mere mouthpiece to whomever he was most recently convinced by 
(before he married his conservative wife and started working for 
GE, he was a liberal).

I don't think Palin will ever recover from the (correct) national 
perception of her as an idiot.  We could only (cynically and crassly) 
hope that either her or Michelle Bachmann are on the final Republican 
ticket, because unlike Palin who is simply motivated by power, 
Bachmann is sincerely a right-wing nutjob, but the country will not 
vote in someone who doesn't just bow at the waist to religious 
extremism and Tea-Party racist anarchism, but believes and 
espouses it.  Gingrich, like Palin, is motivated by power, but he 
didn't bow low enough and tried to sound Presidential and 
reasonable too soon, so I don't know if he'll ever recover.  Tim 
Pawlenty is too cream-corn to care about: he's a light weight like 
Dan Quayle was.  He'll bow appropriately and he'll do whatever the 
smart folks want him to.  Scary enough, but he doesn't have the 
charisma of Reagan, so he'll never be a powerhouse.

I bet it's going to be Romney.  If he can bow low enough to the 
extremists who run the table at the Primaries, he'll also get the 
votes of the politically smart, who see he's got a centrist enough 
pedigree to get "independent" votes: reasonable people who think 
that experimenting with different styles of health care can't be all 
bad.  And he's basically got the backs of the rich, so they'll love him.

There's a few dark horses out there, I hear though, that might swoop 
in and steal thunder.  The field is so terrible right now, that I wouldn't 
be surprised if a smart, respectable politician we haven't even heard 
inkle yet wins.  And for this person, they will not make the mistake of 
going crazy (Palin, Bachmann), because we already saw how a VP s
election can bring down a campaign.

Matt