Debating the Debate Among Your "Friends"

If you are a political junkie, I know exactly where you were last night! The Super Bowl of politics just had it's first playoff game, and it was great. There is no stage quite like a Presidential Debate.

Pesky pre-rumble formalities

Say what you like about Trump or Clinton as candidates (which I have done on this blog), I have enormous respect for anyone with the guts to get up there and put it on the line. Indeed, I am reminded of President Theodore Roosevelt's famous lines about simply being in the arena:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who point out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic." Delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910.

That said, respect doesn't make me a fan. I still wish I had another option. What's bugging me today however, is the debate over the debate.

9/11 Plus 15

Fifteen years ago today, I was sitting in my D.C. studio apartment reading the Washington Post and sipping my morning coffee. The day's headlines were about a big budget fight on Capitol Hill. For most, a big bag of snores and business as usual in Washington.

Lower Manhattan Pre-9/11

Around 9:45am, the phone rang. It was my sister in Salt Lake City. It was a strange time of day to be calling, but she wanted to know if I was okay? I said "sure, why?" She proceeded to scold me and said: "don't you know what's going on?"

The fact was, I didn't know what was going on. I was a graduate student-- which by default meant I sometimes didn't know what was going on. In a bid to save money (and short-circuit distractions) I didn't have a T.V. and my Internet service was bare-bones. I did have a radio, though, and flicked it on to discover that two planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center. My family had just seen television reports of a plane crashing near downtown, D.C. It looked to them as though it might be pretty close to where I worked.

"I'm okay. Gotta go."

Fear and Loathing in POTUS 2016

Labor Day is traditionally the kickoff of the home stretch of the campaign, a period when those running for office switch their campaigns into overdrive in an effort to "get out the vote" and persuade those Americans who may not have been paying close attention all summer.

My job affords me the opportunity to pay close attention to what is going on in U.S. presidential politics all the time. I get to write about it, talk about it, and express the odd opinion. Moreover, I do my best to approach things from as neutral a perspective as possible-- although I acknowledge that my training predisposes me to certain positions some would never call neutral.

Yet, there's a difference between the analysis and opinion I might offer as a scholar and the way I think about it all as a voter. My eligibility to vote in U.S. elections is a responsibility I take quite seriously. When I was a junior (3rd year) in university, a roommate gave me a book into which he jotted a phrase from Pericles that I've never forgotten:

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all-- Preicles' Funeral Oration, Thucydides's, History of the Peloponnesian Wars.

As a voter, I am fed up and worried about the choices presented to me by both parties. The more I see, the less I like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Winston Churchill was spot on about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. In this presidential election cycle, the Democrats and Republicans have served up lemons. Like many Americans, I feel as though I'm being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. Some will undoubtedly choose to sit this election out. I think that would be a mistake.

I've seen enough already. I'm giving the Libertarians, Gary Johnson and William Weld a look.