JOE BIDEN CAN’T SHUT UP…: GQ Features on men.style.com: "JOE BIDEN CAN’T SHUT UP…
…About Bush, the Democrats, the mess in Iraq. About his chances in 2008 and how he’s going to explain his past screwups. About his near-death experiences. About Republican hypocrisy. Yes, if presidential elections were decided on an ability to speak in great, unfiltered, often inspiring bursts, the senior senator from Delaware would win in a landslide. Now, let him talk By Robert Draper"
What's frustrating, to me, though, is how well every politician comes across individually compared to how inept they all appear in the context of Washington DC partisanship. I don't know how independent this profile is, and I should do some due diligence before getting excited about him as a candidate, but it is encouraging, though.
He seems rather principled, and likely to uphold a consistent progressive ideology as a nice counterexample to the Republican hodgepodge of ideas chosen to maximize voter turnout. To me that has to be one of the must infuriating aspects of the current Republican party: the rejection of an overall theory of small-government and the adoption of a la carte beliefs.
In my youth, oddly, I associated much more so with the Republican party, as it seemed more fundamentally "fair" to empower individuals with their futures, rather than ask a bloated government to adminster job training, health care, retirement security, etc. Trickle-down economics, as I understood it, seemed to make sense. I guess I was more Libertarian, and voted that way the first couple times I could, but I certainly identified the least with the Democrats.
Now, I'm quite the opposite. The libertarian in me has left, as I feel that there remain too many artificial inequities, legacies of past wrongs (racism, sexism, etc), for me to deny the responsibility of a government to level the playing field, so to speak. My inner republican has in turn been outraged by what I perceive to be the abandonment of small-government principles. If Republican positions on individual privacy matters such as abortion and gay rights aren't an obvious enough illustration, simply consider the exorbitant growth in the US budget over the past 6 years. [Foxnews: Federal Budget Grows Massively Under Bush], [Factcheck.org: Spending Growth]
I'll wrap this post up, as I've rambled a bit. If I can do a little background checking on the Biden article, and if he seems like a good candidate, I will try to write a letter to him in support, which I will certainly duplicate here.
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