Reply To: Political Statements
I really don’t think we get enough accurate information about political candidates to be able to judge their characters — not really. The political system is all about influence and public relations. People from either party — from all parties I’ve ever heard of, in fact — are rewarded while running for office when they are able to be agreeable to all sorts of donors & voters, and to support the hot issues of their political groups or subgroups. They’re rewarded for attractiveness and for recognizing and mimicking the acceptable behavior of candidates. Then, once they’re in office, they’re rewarded for delivering various forms of pork to their political districts and various kinds of influence to people whose money and approval they need to stay in power.
All the candidates play stronger to their base of voters during primaries, and all of them diverge from that Strong Party Guy role once they’re after a larger & more diverse group of voters. Hillary Clinton was a very liberal Democrat during the primaries this time around, but politically, she’s much more conservative than that. McCain & Romney were all pro-choice during the New England races — Romney for MA governor and McCain for the 2000 nomination — but switched to much more conservative positions as they worked for the core conservative Republican base’s vote.
The horrible thing to me about all these dynamics is that it isn’t to anybody’s political advantage to really act on the tough, tough issues — real energy & climate policy changes, actual compromise on issues like Social Security & Medicare and all the other big entitlement issues, and of course, creation of real changes in the political system within which they gain and exercise their own power. Neither party is likely to do any of this without some big crisis that forces them to.
And the ratings-mad media conglomerates focus voter attention on crap like flag pins & little racial or gender slurs and refuse to help the American electorate learn things and get real.