More on the Imperial Presidency
There's an interesting article in the Boston Globe (link here).
It details the results when a survey was sent to all of the major candidates for the office of President regarding Presidential powers.
To me, the interesting part is not the commentary, but the link on the left side a short way down on "Candidates' Answers by Question". You can see each of the 12 questions on the survey and how each of the candidates (those who were willing to respond, which was most of the Democrats and three of the Republicans) answered.
Although Mitt Romney has come across as personable and well spoke the two times I've gone to see him speak, I consider this to be one of the most important issues currently facing our country, and his answers here, more than anyone else's, rule him out completely as someone I can support.
Liam.
posted by Liam at 12/27/2007 10:59:00 AM
2 Comments:
Huckabee, Guiliani and Thompson *all* declined to answer *any* questions. Very telling.
Romney's answers are exactly what I expected. I never gave him serious consideration. (Then again, I'm far less serious about politics than you are -- probably because I still live in New Jersey, where my vote counts for much less than yours does in New Hampshire.)
Thursday, December 27, 2007 4:58:00 PM
My apologies for the delay in replying, for the last few days I've been unable to get Blogger.com to let me get to the "Leave your comment" page.
My guess is that Huckabee, Giuliani and Thompson's lack of response may not be as telling as it is the mark of a mistake in prioritization. I'm sure campaigns get a lot of these sorts of questions and such, and probably some staffer looked at it and decided it wasn't one that rose to the candidate's level. Giuliani's campaign, according to the article, did respond, but they did so with a standard stump-speech generic answer, not answering the specifics.
I'd love to have seen how the others would have answered, of course, but having watched how this stuff goes and how busy these people are right now, I try not to ascribe to "I know answering these questions can only hurt me" what is more likely just a minor political mistake. (Then again, since the lack of answer, in my head, doesn't penalize them as badly as Romney's answers do, perhaps it was intentional...)
As to Romney's answers... While not necessarily surprising to me, they are disappointing for two reasons. First, it looks to me a bit like "thou doth protest too much". I've been saying for a while now that I think the reason Hillary Clinton is clearly the most hawkish of the Democrats is because she's a woman and can't afford (politically) to be cast by rivals as the "weak" or "soft" candidate. I think the same is true of Mitt "The most liberal Republican in recent memory" Romney, he's probably trying to take the hardest line stance he can, both because that seems to be playing well for Giuliani (with whom he's been primarily competing until Huckabee's recent surge) and to offset his record. I just don't think (in either case) we can afford to gamble on that assumption.
But secondly, the fact is the man is a likeable guy when you go see him. This last time we saw him, as he and his wife walked around the room of 75 or 100 people who'd come out to see him, they stopped and chatted with us for a good 5 minutes or more, and he seemed to be a genuinely likeable person.
I also am finding my self-definition as a centrist and an independent strained this election, because there isn't a likely Republican candidate that I could even consider supporting. Of course, part of that is because none of them (except Ron Paul) seems to be a fiscal conservative, only social ones, and part of it is because of what it means to be an independent: After seven years of Republican rule (six of those in the Congress as well), it makes sense that the "balance things out" aspect of my nature would be looking to swing the pendulum the other way.
Still, it would have been nice to find in Romney a candidate that I could say "Well, he's not my first choice, but at least if he won the primary I'd feel like we could do a lot worse". With this set of responses from Romney, I find that of the three likely winners of the Republican nomination (Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee), I can't really find any of them to be the lesser of evils.
Liam.
Saturday, December 29, 2007 6:00:00 AM
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