Fred Thompson vs. Barack Obama
As an independent, the choices from the two major parties are all somewhat disappointing this year, but that’s no different from any Presidential election in recent memory.
On the Republican side of the aisle, I’m inclined to support Fred Thompson, despite his reactionary stand on abortion and gay rights. He squarely hits one of my two hard-line issues (effective self-defense) and he’s leading a straightforward campaign the way I’d like campaigns to run. Candidates other than Thompson switched to election mode far too early this season, and if he doesn’t place despite the original hype around him, you can bet money that the election season will continue expanding.
I’m especially impressed with his stand on tax reform: don’t just simplify taxes, abolish the IRS and simplify our arcane tax rules. Tax law stands with prohibition law and traffic law as laws everybody breaks; in the case of tax law, you don’t know which laws you’re breaking, but it is very likely that you’re breaking them. Just as with any law everybody breaks, tax laws are used to stifle free speech and other civil rights.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, there’s no one among the major candidates I’d be willing to vote for, but I’d love to see an election headed by Thompson and Barack Obama. It would, I think, be an election of issues.
So I gave Thompson money this week, and I’ll be giving Obama my vote in the California primaries.
And that, by the way, is a note to Republicans: I’m not a Republican. I voted George Bush twice, solely because he was a strong supporter of effective self-defense. I may disagree with everything else your candidate says, but if they are consistently a strong supporter of effective self-defense, I’ll vote for them. (Unless, that is, the Democrats actually run someone supporting an end to prohibition.)
If you don’t run somebody I can vote for, I’ll vote for someone else. That’s it. You can scream “but Hillary!” all you want; I don’t care. I don’t vote against people, I vote for issues. Stand with me on the issues, and I’ll vote for you. Don’t, and I’ll vote for someone else.
I will vote third party before I vote against someone out of fear. Voting out of fear makes fears come true.
- January 2, 2008: What voters want
-
A round-up of commentary on our desire for a totally insane type-A president.
Paul Marks started it off at Samizdata.net:
Fred Thompson is in the middle of a 40 town Iowa tour—so he is hardly lazy. And he does go on television shows—thus dealing with critics, such as myself, who attacked him for not going on enough shows. But what sort of person would enjoy all this? A lunatic. Someone who was interested in office for its own sake—not as a means to reduce the size and scope of government.
What the media are saying is that Fred Thompson is too sane to be President. It is not enough to produce detailed policies for dealing with the entitlement program Welfare State, or producing a new optional flat tax to deal with the nightmare of complexity that the income tax has become. It is not even enough to have a long record of service.
No—someone has to enjoy the prospect for office for its own sake, not to reduce the size and scope of government and restore a Federal Republic. One must enjoy the whole process of politics—i.e. be crazy. Or one must pretend to enjoy it—i.e. be a liar. And then people complain that politicians are either crazy or corrupt.
Glenn Reynolds continued at Instapundit.com:
I think he's right. Thompson is running the kind of campaign—substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites—that pundits and journalists say they want, but he’s getting no credit for it from the people who claim that’s what they want. It’s like in Tootsie when Dustin Hoffman tries doing the things he's heard women say they want from men, only to discover that they don’t really want those things at all.
Jonathan Adler at the corner:
In short, some say Thompson doesn’t want to be President badly enough. At a time when Presidential wannabes plot their moves years (if not decades) in advance, that should be a feature, not a bug.
Jimmie talks about rewarding good campaign behavior at the Sundries Shack:
- December 30, 2007: Super-president
-
The Type-A President
Fred Thompson summarized why I prefer his campaign style in response to a question in Iowa. One of the questioners said “My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?”
Thompson responded that “I want the people to have the best president that they can have.”
If people really want in their president a super type-a personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they could achieve the Presidency of the United States, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and hope I haven’t talked you out of anything. I honestly want—I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances than achieving the presidency under false pretenses.
I go out of my way to be myself because I don’t want anybody to think they are getting something they are not getting. I’m not consumed by this process. I’m not consumed with the notion of being President. I’m simply saying I’m willing to do what’s necessary to achieve it if I’m in sync with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. I’ll do what I’ve always done in the rest of my life and I will take it on and do a good job and you’ll have the disadvantage of having someone who probably can’t jump up and click their heels three times but will tell you the truth and you’ll know where the President stands at all times.
In a posting on Red State, commenter daveinboca echoes my own preference for a Thompson-Obama match:
- Barack Obama
- “Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign”
- Blogburst for Fred: Join the Marbleheaders
- “Two Hundred and Thirty One years ago yesterday, a barefoot, ill-clad army of 2,000 men crossed the ice choked Delaware River to surprise the Hessians at Trenton, giving George Washington his most important victory in the cause of American independence.”
More presidential elections
- If I were running for president…
- I’d make heavy use of short videos, and I’d record everything I did with the media.
- Fighting for the American Dream
- Joe the Plumber writes about his experiences at the center of one of the most vicious smear campaigns in recent memory.
- McCain sees the light: campaign finance reform dead
- Now, will he introduce bills to repeal those laws?
- Vote on performance, not promises
- If you’re disappointed that President Obama is the same wheeler-dealer he was when he was a Senator, take it as a lesson for future elections: vote performance and record, not promises.
- A proven reformer
- If one thing exemplifies the difference between the two main campaigns, it’s their encouragement of anonymous donors.
- 20 more pages with the topic presidential elections, and other related pages
More taxes
- A customer service model of federal spending
- “If we can put a moon on the man, why cannot we devise a system whereby every state is billed by DC annually, and let the states compete for citizens to pay the taxes?” Moving from a system where the federal government taxes individuals to one where the federal government taxes state governments makes all of our lives a lot simpler and solves a lot of thorny civil rights issues as well.
- What’s wrong with a national sales tax?
- When considering a new tax, consider how easily that tax is abused by the state and by the state’s good intentions.
- No corporation pays taxes
- Corporations don’t pay taxes. Their employees do, and their customers do. Every dollar that a company has to pay in taxes, that company must pass on to either their employees or their customers, if the company wants to stay in business.
- How to raise taxes in a Tea Party world
- If you want to raise taxes, you need to show that you can be trusted to cut spending first.
- Lifestyles of the rich and obscure
- Tax cuts for the wealthy? I’d be happier about being wealthy if the lifestyle came along with it. Instead I’m stuck with Val-U-Rite vodka.
- 16 more pages with the topic taxes, and other related pages
More Fred Thompson
- Fred Thompson explicates the Economy
- Fred Thompson explains the economic bailout to those of us unable to understand the complexities of the issue.
- Fred Thompson’s decision to withdraw
- If we continue to treat presidential elections as horseraces, we’re going to create a system that selects sociopaths for president.
- Super-president
- The best president we can have is not a cartoon character.
"If I knew the way, I would take you home."