Adams recaps the last seven months
If you’ve read my column before you may have noticed that I like to take an unpopular stance and research it, and provide a case for why the view point has merit. Recently you might have seen me do this with issues like global warming and steroids in baseball. However, since it’s the end of the year, I decided that for this article I’ll just review what has happened the last several months.
The first topic I will start off with is my personal favorite, Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul. Paul started his campaign with virtually no name recognition and ended his campaign with at least a little. But while he lost his party’s nomination, he still accomplished a great deal. Ron Paul had the most YouTube channel subscribers of any politician, more meet-up groups than his opponents, and he was the most requested Presidential candidate on Eventful.com. While his popularity never won him any primaries, it did shed light on his strict-constitutionalist points of view. In fact, enough people got behind him that he even set some Republican fund raising records. While recognizing that he has lost this campaign, he lets his faithful supporters know that we have not lost the campaign for ideas.
While Ron Paul was wooing true conservatives and anti-war liberals, Al Gore was doing pretty good for himself. Winning a Nobel Peace Prize, an Academy Award and writing a best-selling book. He has become the new spokesman for global warming and arguably the ideological leader of the Democratic Party. We all know it’s been a pretty successful year for Gore, but I think the most interesting issue surrounding Al Gore today is this Democratic race for the nomination. Gore is definitely one of the few, and possibly the only person alive who could potentially decide the party nominee today by deciding who he supports. With his support from all sectors of the Democratic Party, there has even been talk of having the delegates nominate Gore at the party convention. If you don’t believe me, Google it, and I promise you it won’t even be from a tabloid. We all know that the Democratic Party wouldn’t do it, but still, it’s interesting to imagine.
From one major Democrat to another: when Barack Obama began his race for the White House, he was just a freshman Senator from Illinois who had only proposed two pieces of legislation. Today he’s still that same Freshman Senator with only two pieces of legislation, but he’s also a household name and the leading Democrat in the race. It’s almost unbelievable how Obama has overcome major double digit deficits to actually be leading Hillary Clinton right now. There’s no question that he is a powerful, charismatic speaker that can motivate large crowds. But that doesn’t mean it’s a shoo-in for him, Democrats have yet to decide if they want the “hope” and “change” Obama offers or the experience Hillary Clinton brings.
This brings me to the Republican nominee John McCain. McCain is definitely an interesting case. He ran against Bush in 2000, angered conservatives and lost. He continued to anger conservatives throughout the next seven years, and then decided to run for President again. And as fate would have it, he won. Now that the maverick McCain is the nominee, and far less liberal than Clinton and Obama, conservatives are tripping over each other to support him. At the age of 71, McCain if elected will be the oldest person to take the Oath of Office. However, McCain has laid out an energetic campaign which he says he will campaign for every vote instead of just a simple majority.
This election is one of our most important. Americans are not happy with the current system. President Bush has recently hit his all-time low approval rating of 30 percent, and Congress is nearing their all-time low as well with just 22 percent of Americans approving of its governing. The President blames Congress, Congress blames the President and poll numbers sink lower and lower. In reality, there is probably enough blame to go around. Before I end this column for the summer, I have one request for each of you. Watch for current events, look into the issues and study the platforms of the candidates. Perhaps if all Americans did this, there wouldn’t be such widespread disappointment in the candidates that do get elected.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Apr 25 2008. Filed under Opinion.
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