Shallow end of the electoral gene pool

by: Eric B.

Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 13:33:12 PM EST

A positive development this morning in the form of Stephen Henderson's column: Rather than waving off complaints by people who by process of elimination must be classified as liberals, he addressed them. The problem is that his reasoning is terrible.

Lots of readers seem to think that rather than choose from among a relatively weak field of candidates, all of whom presented serious issues we'd have to overlook, the Free Press would have been better off taking a pass and saying none of the GOP hopefuls was worth backing.

...snip...

None of the above may have been the easier choice. But it's not the choice voters will be faced with Tuesday.

The right choice for us is to make a case for the best candidate in the field, and defend it.

That's all endorsements really ever are -- an expression of finite choice. We don't get to say who should be mayor or congressman or president, just who among the candidates would be the best, based on what we value in individuals and for the state, community or nation they seek to serve.

Okay, where to start? I know, let's just lay this out there ... most people capable of fogging a mirror understand that the Republican Party has richly earned the right to not be taken seriously as an organization for governance. This is a political party that last year damaged the nation's credit rating because they don't understand the difference between paying bills and spending. This is a political party that believes that they have science on their side when its members claim that climate change is a global communist plot being perpetrated with the willing assistance of greedy scientists. This is a political party that believes that the housing and finance crisis were caused by federally-insured mortgage lenders participating in subprime lending at a time when such activities were expressly against federal laws (again, there's a reason why they called it "subprime lending"). This is a political party that, after being responsible for two foreign wars in the last decade that have proven disatrous, wants a third at the behest of the Israelis on the grounds that a considerable portion of it believes that this will set off the series of events that will lead to a second Kingdom of God on Earth. This is a political party that believes that allocations for Sesame Street and NOAA weather satellites are the primary cause for the national debt, and not tax cuts/foreign wars/rising costs for health care. This is a party that believes that the Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment with in mind the belief that Catholic-run universities shouldn't have to provide birth control pills to female employees. The mind fogs at the no-end-to-nonsense that regularly churns out from the Republican Party, and the time has come to finally ask whether it is capable of producing any candidate who can be trusted to manage the federal executive branch ... considering the sort of pressure that would be brought on him by his own people.

Henderson skips past alllll this and says they have to endorse ... someone ... if they want anyone to take seriously their dedication to democracy. So, they picked Willard. And why not? Rick Santorum, the last of the not-Romneys is a religious zealot who believes that a woman's womb belongs to her church; Ron Paul is crazy enough to once have authorized the publication of a newsletter warning of a coming race war (if the bigotry isn't bad enough, how about a failed prediction or two of pending Apocalypse?); and Newt Gingrich would through sheer weight of ego cause the federal executive branch to collapse in on itself.

As for Willard, the Freep cites his experience as a governor and as a private sector turnaround man as assets. Well, his ability to compromise with "the other party," something the centrist set believes to be the primary quality (placed above doing the right or smartest thing possible), would be compromised heavily by his own people (in fact, this is a reason why his own party suspects that he's really a traitor). As for his experience in the private sector, his is mostly in taking existing companies, liquidating assets, outsourcing jobs to cheaper locations, and cashing in for the profits. In other words, his private sector experience is in doing precisely the things that have brought the country close to ruination. When will the wise guys in the editorial department finally get around to asking, "Just what is the difference between Willard and his dad?" The answer: His dad built the kind of company that employed thousands and helped create the middle class from which his son squeezed its value until all that remained was a dry husk.

That's the sort of private sector experience the Freep endorsed in picking Willard over "None of the above." Or, as Bruce Bartlett, who served in the Reagan administration, said on The Daily Show last week, "One party is insane." (Of course, he also said that the Democratic Party has no balls, which we all also know.)

The purpose of a newspaper isn't to guide people's decision making. It's to tell people the truth. If no one is qualified for the job, then the paper has no business suggesting that someone is. Or, to put it in the parlance of the time, if a private employer interviews a bunch of people for an open position and has no faith that any of them can execute the required duties with competence, then they reject the entire lot of them and keep looking. A "none of the above" endorsement is, at a time when people are squealing for government to operate like a business, not only appropriate but demanded by circumstance. The paper could have chosen to take a provocative, important, useful position in rejecting not only the candidates but their party as a obstacle to American revitalization (or, keeping in line with the few remaining honest conservatives, calling it insane). It chose, instead, the easy way out.