Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Election Starts..............Now!!!!!

Is it just me, or are we hearing more this presidential "election cycle" about how much MONEY the candidates are raising, rather than their views on the issues? It seems that the amount of money raised is used as an early poll about who's hot and who's not. But nothing about what these folks stand for, really. Lots of talk about Clinton and Obama, how much money they've raised. Not much or any talk about their actual voting records say, on the Iraq war? Has it come down to this that money is the sole indicator of "electability"?

I'm not sure of answers. We don't need another arrogant fool like Nader bringing us another Bush (an even more arrogant and dangerous fool). But who is real and who isn't? And can you be real (ie, a flawed human being) and run for "high office" anyway? Or is it just about the money? Or am I just becoming yet another bitter cynic? (well, I hope not!)

4 comments:

Suzy said...

Whoa ... are you sure about Nader? I haven't seen the documentary about him yet, but my understanding is that much of the bad stuff about him -- particularly in the last election -- was a manufactured smear of yet another liberal icon.

poodledoc said...

Suzy....thanks for challenging me on this. I freely admit I don't have all the "facts" on Nader and I haven't seen the film either. My comments stemmed from the observation that after he ran in 2000, helping W get elected, he disappeared off the map. Had he stayed around, worked hard to build a true third party, I wouldn't feel this way. But my impression is he's a loner. I may be wrong on that, but......who was the liberal icon to whom you were referring?

geo said...

I don't think that Nader has ever built a movement. He seems to like being "the star" who is the "anti-star" in a sense.

One could argue about his early career - but there it was a totally different kind of world (cars for example)

Unknown said...

Hi Doc Poodle -- I mean PoodleDoc

You make two good points here. I agree that marketing and sex-appeal and electability (sp?) have surpassed content in the political arena. It becomes so apparent when I hear or see footage of elections several decades ago.

I was disappointed with Nader. I almost voted for him, but then right there in the voting booth I realized that I just had to vote for Al Gore. I don't know if he is ego-driven, but I do question his intentions. Compare his post-election contribution with Al Gore's.