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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Nice Guys Finish…First?

Strickland is not much of a candidate. In Congress he’s voted as a liberal most of the time, heavy on spending and taxation. He has few ideas, and some of the few he has presented have been analyzed as unworkable. He has no daring, no noticeable personality or charisma. But he’s a nice man who […]

Strickland is not much of a candidate. In Congress he’s voted as a liberal most of the time, heavy on spending and taxation. He has few ideas, and some of the few he has presented have been analyzed as unworkable. He has no daring, no noticeable personality or charisma. But he’s a nice man who works well with others — and that’s the main reason why Blackwell is losing this race. ~The Courier in their “un-endorsement” of Ken Blackwell

I have followed politics for a while, and I can’t remember ever seeing a paper retract its endorsement of a candidate, unless there was some personal scandal or unless he had been indicted or convicted of something.  Losing an endorsement by being, for lack of a better description, mean has to be close to unprecedented.  This tends to confirm my view that our mass democracy rewards the more inoffensive candidate and that elections have next to nothing to do with policy.  That is why scaring people about the Dems’ bad policies–when we even know what they are–and Republicans’ talking up the GOP’s supposedly better policies don’t do very much this year or really in most years.  Above all, a candidate cannot scare or unsettle the voters; he cannot appear abrasive or short-tempered or hysterical.  If he does any of these things, he will almost certainly lose.  This why we are led by a race of mindless nebbishes.  That is what democracy gets you.  But, if it is the system we have (and, unfortunately, it really is), we may as well use it to throw out the incompetent and corrupt nebbishes and get some new nebbish blood in there.

 

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