Someone’s having lunch. (Dawna Raven sky Zimbalist, CC-BY 2.0)

Who is my dream candidate for national office? I want a true moderate. Not a political hack whose “moderation” is just accepting the overspending, corruption, and big government programs of both sides of the aisle. But someone who recognizes the flaws—and benefits—of each side in the debate, and who fights corruption wherever it occurs and not just when it occurs on the other side of the aisle.

Too many politicians—for all practical purposes, 100%—are against corruption and all the powers of incumbency when they’re the underdog, but willing to look the other way when they’re the ones benefiting. My dream candidate will take on corruption in both parties.

The obvious example is cronyism. Cronyism ensures a constantly expanding government. Conservatives can rail against encroaching government power all they want, but until they take on the reason that government keeps getting bigger, they won’t be effective at stopping it. Crony capitalism is that reason. It is the reason programs rarely get smaller, that budgets baseline at the previous year’s level, and that new programs are created in the backrooms.

To the extent that I’m a single-issue voter, that issue is effective self-defense, because it impinges on all of our other rights. When self-defense goes, so does free speech, free assembly, and privacy. So my dream candidate needs to support effective self-defense.

A candidate who recognizes that contraception and abortion legislation are distractions from the real issues facing America today would be awesome.

These are the things that have to be dealt with if we’re going to make any progress.

Unfortunately, that candidate chose not to run, and I think for good reasons, at least at the time.¹ So, imagine my surprise finding out yesterday that Obama thinks that candidate is in the race!

Oddly enough, Barack Obama’s latest campaign attack ad is leveled at Sarah Palin, dishonestly editing a number of her remarks into a one-minute video that can’t even rebut any of the phony sound bites Team Obama manufactured, other than to unilaterally declare “these attacks are wrong and dangerous” at the end of the video.

What makes the ad truly bizarre is that Palin is not running against Obama, or running for any elected office at all. She’s a private citizen, whose comments Team Obama heavily edited to turn her into a demon figure, apparently in the belief that it will help them raise money and energize their dispirited base.

How many great leaders of American history have tried to run against the vice-presidential candidate from the previous ticket, after they retired from all elected offices?

If Obama expected her to respond as a social conservative and shore up his anti-anti-contraception campaign, well, he doesn’t know Palin well. Instead, she responded by pointedly challenging him to a debate on the real issues:

…a debt crisis that has us hurtling towards a Greek-style collapse, entitlement programs going bankrupt, a credit downgrade for the first time in our history, a government takeover of the health care industry that makes care more expensive and puts a rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats between you and your doctor, $4 and $5 gas at the pump exacerbated by an anti-drilling agenda that rejects good paying energy sector jobs and makes us more dependent on dangerous foreign regimes, a war in Afghanistan that seems unfocused and unending, a global presidential apology tour that’s made us look feeble and ridiculous, a housing market in the tank, the longest streak of high unemployment since World War II, private-sector job creators and industry strangled by burdensome regulations and an out-of-control Obama EPA, an attack on the Constitutional protection of religious liberty, an attack on private industry in right-to-work states, crony capitalism run amok in an administration in bed with their favored cronies to the detriment of genuine free market capitalism, green energy pay-to-play kickbacks to Obama campaign donors, and a Justice Department still stonewalling on a bungled operation that armed violent Mexican drug lords and led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

I’d love to see a debate on these issues, and I challenge the White House Press Corps to follow up with the President. If Obama wants to debate a non-candidate, then do it for real. Back in 2008, I made a joke post about how George Bush lost the election because it seemed that Obama would have preferred to run against Bush than against McCain or Palin. Perhaps now he’s finally up to campaigning against Palin, even if it’s four years late. Can he do it on the issues, though?