With only a few weeks left, I think it’s important to re-visit the whole candidate issue. My liveliest political conversations often come at the hands (expense of?) my friend, Tom Gasta, who — though often diametrically opposed to whatever I think — normally ends a conversation with, “I don’t think we’re all that different on the big issues.” I suspect he’s right. The problem, of course, is the definition of the “big issues”.
I’ve tried several of the candidate selectors available online, some good, some awful. I think my favorite is the one at President Match. After going through the entire questionairre, you’ll then have the opportunity to see side-by-side comparisons of the candidates. After completing this exercise, I can see why the Nation is so divided on this election. The problem is (at least, this is what I think the problem is…) that very few of us see things as black and white. While we might favor a stance on one issue, we could easily hold the opposite stand on another. And many of these things we might “somewhat support” or “somewhat oppose” and the candidate “strongly supports” or “strongly opposes”. So, in the end, although tools like these are helpful, we’re left to our own devices to make a decision. And when we get to that point, all of the intangibles that can’t be articulated or measured swing into play. Issues like morality, character, principles.
I’m interested to know how you scored, so be sure to let me know. In the interest of full disclosure, I was 51% Bush, 39% Kerry. But I can easily see after viewing the comparison that a couple of nudges in either direction on just a few issues would sway the results. Interesting…