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Top Presidential Disqualifiers
The great unwashed have been polled by WSJ/NBC, and have spoken. The top three traits causing voters to be uncomfortable or have reservations about a president candidate are: 1. No previous elected experience (excludes Carson and Fiorina) 2. A leader of the Tea Party movement (excludes Cruz and possibly Rubio); and 3. No college degree (excludes Walker).
While I haven’t been able to dig up the methodology on this poll — and I suspect Democrats are over-sampled, as usual — I believe these results are instructive. The most favorable traits among the general electorate are for an African-American or a woman, which verifies my speculation that Hillary picks up six points just for being a woman, the way Barack Obama picked up six for being African-American. It also tells me that Americans are enamored by what identity politics says about them way more than they are interested in improving the country. I think that’s sad, but true.
The poll also indicates how hung-up the country has become on credentials, and how badly damaged the Tea Party brand has become. There’s also something deeply disturbing about the state of the nation’s moral compass that “corrupt” doesn’t even register as a category. That may be a flaw in the poll or, perhaps — as long as your team wins — it doesn’t matter if your candidate regularly sells her influence to the highest bidder <cough>Hillary Clinton<cough>. Hard to tell without more information.
Among Democrats, the highest negatives are:
- A leader of the Tea Party movement;
- No previous elected experience;
- No college degree; and
- An evangelical Christian (surprise!).
Among Republicans, the highest negatives are:
- No previous elected experience;
- A person who is gay or lesbian (I don’t think this would be a thing if it weren’t for the SSM battle);
- No college degree; and
- First term senator.
What do you think? Are these traits of any concern to you when picking your primary or general election candidate? Or do you have other, greater concerns?
As an aside, is the Tea Party brand redeemable with average voters?
Image Credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
Published in Politics
That’s a complete non sequitur. There’s nothing about wanting “the US to lead with a strong interventionist foreign policy” that’s incompatible with libertarianism. For example, I’d go so far as to argue that Barry Goldwater’s views on foreign policy (and nobody would call him an isolationist) were informed by his having been a libertarian. He viewed communism as evil in its restriction of individual freedom (among other things) and would’ve been willing to use military force to fight it if he deemed it necessary. To Goldwater, it wasn’t just an economic argument about which Hayek was right and Marx wrong. Humanity was involved in a clear struggle of good vs evil, and if half a century later someone would come along and say that the costs in human life and liberty of an isolationist foreign policy are greater than the costs of an interventionist one, that wouldn’t disqualify them from being a libertarian.
Is it possible that the official party platform of the Libertarian Party and/or the statements of Dr. and Dr. Paul are what led to the confusion on the matter?
Indeed, I stand corrected. I was going by what at least appear to be the modern libertarian foreign policy. I should have just said non-interventionist.
1. Progressive Democrat
2. Progressive Republican
3. Daddy and Brother Previous Presidents
Can you give an example of what you mean about Cruz? Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but I don’t regard him as a hothead (more of an absentee Senator of late).
That would, indeed, be me.
Anyone who WANTS to run for President should be disqualified. You do have to be a bit of a sociopath. Let’s find a good person who doesn’t want it (like George Washington) and try to convince them.
The Finger of Doom is popular up here in the Great White North, but then our legislative debates are more adversarial, by design:
Bob Ely being the obvious exception, of course!
Forgive my riding a hobby-horse of mine, but dovish foreign policy is not a core libertarian belief, though it is (IMHO, unfortunately) a dominant one among self-professed libertarians. For an analogy, acceptance of the Chalcedonian Creed is a dominant belief within Christianity, though it is not a core one (unless you wish to argue that Copts aren’t Christian).
[Edit: I see Steven Walk beat me to it.]
Indeed, the Non-Aggression Principle can totally be interpreted to allow for military intervention for the purpose of stopping aggression by a hostile force against a peaceful population.
The problem is that in international situations it can be very difficult to determine which side is the aggressor and which side is the victim. The middle east, for example, is a mish-mash of factions all fighting against each other, and few factions can be ruled out as aggressors. This is precisely why virtually every libertarian supports extreme caution when deploying military forces, but few rule it out in all cases.
(The other problem is that militaries are paid for by Income Tax, which is very much a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. The involuntary funding of militaries is very much a problem for most, if not all, libertarians.)
Arguing that a state’s military should only be used in defence of that state is not strictly-speaking a libertarian position, but rather a nationalist/nativist one, and arguing that states shouldn’t have militaries (or that states shouldn’t exist in the first place) goes beyond mere libertarianism.
..2/
At that point, why the hell intervene at all?
Furthermore, just as “libertarianism” is a spectrum of ideology rather than a rigid dogma, so for that matter is “interventionism”.
Milton Friedman supported WWII and most of the Cold War, but opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War. So, interventionist or isolationist?
He also believed that conscription was akin to slavery, but supported mandatory military training for the purpose of maintaining reserve forces.
Of course, not all libertarians count Milton Friedman as one of their own, but then again the fact that there’s no rigid libertarian orthodoxy beyond “more liberty is better than less liberty” is kinda the point.
Some top disqualifiers:
Oops, did I write “he”? I should have been more gender equitable and included “she”. Nobody specific in mind. Ahem.
Well, that’s sorta my point. If you need to flip a coin to choose a side then it’s probably best to stay out of a specific conflict. By analogy, we ask the police to stop crime but we don’t ask the police to adjudicate disputes between criminals.
That may be true, but it may also be true in some cases that it’s better to be on the winning side than no side at all. From a purely national interest point of view, that is. Morally is another question.
Of course, as everyone knows, libertarians have no morals, so the question is purely academic. (Kidding.)
And by only criticising libertarian foreign one leaves out Buchanan et al. and the people at The American Conservative, for instance, who are equally non-interventionist.
(yeah, I’m going to sheepishly backtrack and say I shouldn’t have equated popular libertarian beliefs with core libertarian beliefs.)
Oh. my. GAWSH. Yes. I thought I was the *only one* who cringes to see that. No real human uses that gesture–only politico-bots!
I think they start out gesticulating like normal people, and you can just see the hand begin to close and the thumb begin to stick up as their careers progress. It’s getting so that I can barely watch debates anymore.
I’d say they are arguably more non-interventionist than the average libertarian.
There is a specific reason why they choose one gesture and stick with it. The alternative, to just do whatever feels natural at the time, means that they are guaranteed to look really idiotic at least some of the time when they make some unintended gesture without really thinking about it.
Sticking with one, rigid, still, ugly-but-inoffensive gesture, all the time, every time, reduces the risk of occasionally making a really offensive gesture.
A single bad photo can ruin a political career. Therefore it’s more important to avoid bad photos than to produce great photos:
It’s the name that’s broken though, not the ideas. The name has just been vilified to the point where it’s become a dirty word.
Never worked in the private sector -DQ.
Close relative or married to a prior President -DQ
Does not respect Constitutional limitations on government -DQ
Poor communicator of conservative principles -DQ
Oooh, a Finger of Doom shot!
Once heard Art Buchwald rant about why we can’t have better Presidential candidates. Went through a long list … Afraid to fly – out
Spouse won’t let you -out
Been to a psychiatrist – out
Etc etc
“So, who are we left with? A peanut farmer and a guy who played football without a helmet!”
And a first-term senator to boot. Man, we really screwed up with that one.
I think I’m completely over the “Tea Party” label and would be happy to see it expunged from public discourse. That’s partly because the brand has been poisoned by the liberals’ willful mischaracterizations, but also because I’m honestly not sure anymore what the term is supposed to mean. I gather that it’s generally used to distinguish so-called “Tea Party” candidates from so-called “establishment” candidates. But since I’m not sure who the “establishment” is, that doesn’t really help me.
I suspect no two “Tea Party” candidates have exactly the same opinions about all of the issues. So I’d rather just dispense with the labels and focus on actual positions.
How did we let this happen? The Tea Party started as a completely sane movement to contain government within Constitutional limitations and to promote common sense fiscal sanity in Washington. Is the Right ever going to learn how to fight the Left’s bullying?
If only…
The whole ‘hijacking the House and Senate over a bananas scheme to defund Obamacare that wouldn’t actually defund Obamacare and then accidentally shutting down the government’ thing was pretty bad.
Too many opportunists barnacling onto the brand in order to build up some astroturf and make a quick buck, as well as a few too many knuckleheads saying really dumb things about birth certificates, “real” Americans, etc.
Look, the Left has more than its share of bullies, but they always put up a huge smiley-face pillow in front of them. “We just care about letting people love each other!” “We want to make sure people aren’t poor and sad!” The right is very, very, very bad at smiling while sticking the knife in. We can do smiley, and we can do mean. We just don’t do them at the same time, which is what democratic politics always demand.
Douglas Adams had it right:
“The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”