Postby dolfan » October 6th, 2009, 4:28 am
Smart is also in the eye of the beholder. Obama is "book smart", as they say, but he has no real leadership sense and when it comes to judging what is best for America, he's bereft of all sense OR he's against America.
A large amount of people will vote for president based on a perception of being "book smart" if he's also propped up by enough people who, themselves are "book smart" and media-smart. That's the left wing, in general.
There's another kind of smart. It's "classic liberty smart", and those are the limited government types like Ronald Reagan. Personally, I don't think there's anything close to a Reagan in Washington today. Republicans quote Reagan, invoke Reagan, tie themselves to Reagan, but continually support the growth of government in scope and size. Oh, they do some lip service to small government, but that's all it is. That type of Republican is deemed "moderate" or "pragmatist". Reagan was deemed to be a lunatic, dangerous and also to be the greatest president of the century and the great communicator. He was seen by those who loved him as being smart about small government, smart about national defense. Even then, he was rather unique; today, he's an archive of wit and quotables and not much more. To me, Ron Paul is the only one who comes close. He's different, though, and would have us far less involved in international squabbles. That is a problem, I admit; I'm not confident we'd have a strong defense with Ron Paul. Maybe, but I'm not assured.
Then, there's the kind of smart that Republicans vote for. It's possibly the worst kind of smart, more akin to cleverness than "smartness". It consists of acting one way for the crowd to win its approval and then to betray their perceptions after approval is won. It is what George W. Bush did, using the term "compassionate conservative", which anyone of us should've known was code for big government. But, we want to believe, and we did. He turned on us, quickly, and never really looked back. With the dust of history settling just a little bit, I can see that now where maybe I couldn't or wouldn't before. He grew government at an unprecedented pace, expanded executive power to unknown heights, and he talked about conservative values and used the mannerisms and language of the average working person. It was clever. We thought it was smart; and maybe in some ways it was a kind of smart, but the kind of smart it was was way too close to the Obama kind of smart for me to feel nostalgic about it now.
It is that cleverness that scares me about all the ones on the list, except for Sarah Palin. To the person (excluding Hillary and Obama because they're Democrats), each of those listed is really a big government Republican OR in the case of Bobby Jindal, too unknown to say he's the guy to support. They may all (exc. Palin and Jindal) be better alternatives to Obama or Hillary, but only in the way that carbon monoxide poisoning is a better way to die than being eaten alive by 100 hungry chihuahuas.
As to Sarah Palin, I don't think she's "book smart", and I'm not convinced she's clever, either. She may be developing cleverness, and is most likely being "handled" into it, but I think at her core, she's much truer to a Reagan-like view of America than anyone else in the game. She may be, in fact, the only one who even actually considers Reagan's views as having any merit to them. She may be the only one who actually thinks as Reagan thought in terms of government vs. the individual; she may be getting too much advice from those very clever Republican hands, though, in expressing that. That's what worries me most about her. So, while I think she's extremely attractive as a libertarian-minded person, I also fear that she may wind up as a willing accomplice or an unwitting one -- either is unfortunate -- to her own handling and packaging. Sort of GIGO thing, she could wind up as just another clever candidate if not a successful one.
I can't say about Jindal one way or another. Don't know enough about him. If I wind up surprise, it'll have to be a pleasant one because I will presume that he's like the rest of 'em (clever, big government) until he shows otherwise.
Human government bears the same relation to hell as the church bears to heaven. (David Lipscomb, On Civil Government, 72).
I agree that she probably wouldn't get elected but I think it may be closer than a landslide for the dems. The question was "Who would you support if the election was right now", not who do you think would win. 
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