Dear Potential Presidential Candidates

[shavastak]

Dear Potential 2008 Presidential Candidates,

Whether you are Democrat or Republican, affiliated or independent, if you win you will have a godawful mess to clean up. Even if we're really lucky, and the Iraq thing is over, and New Orleans is rebuilt, and the economy is back to normal, there will be the largest national debt this country has ever had to take care of. So start formulating your plans now, and for the sake of the gods, don't predicate them on a strong economy, because we never know when the economy may tank. Oh, and we want a healthy environment, safe borders, streets, and airports, and better schools. So get cracking. You've got about 18 months.

Sincerely,

Joe Public


PS: If you're running for congress in 2006 instead, we want the same stuff, only about 12 months sooner.

Comments

[paka.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, Republican strategy relies on creating a mess.

That way, they can claim that their candiates are best qualified to continue applying their prior experience to the problem. Should they lose, then they have free reign to criticise any Democrat attempt to resolve the problem.

The fact that the problem would not have existed were it not for the Republicans is something quickly swept under the rug by claiming to be all bipartisan and interested in resolving the problem, and by complaining about the blame game.

Should ordinary citizens become totally disenchanted, seeing the government as something far out of control, then it becomes a point in favor of the Republican version of small government.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping the small government excuse won't work this time. After all, we just had a glaring example of why we need a federal government. Even far-out Libertarians are going 'oh yeah, well, organization during national disasters...distribution of national resources...yeah I could see that being important...although of course our federal government didn't exactly help out this time around...'

I refuse to despair. There are at least 50 million people who realize that the Democrats were getting it mostly right for 8 years. *Yes* they were countered by 51 million people who were so afraid of Iraq going badly that they reelected the man who caused the mess...or so afraid of gays and abortions that they were willing to accept the mess...but still, 50 million people. That's a lot.