Seems like we’ve been here before.
It’s an election year, and we have two candidates no one is really thrilled over. How do Americans decide which man to vote for in November? How can we be sure to pick the best person for the job? Every day on nearly every news broadcast, one issue or another is splashed across the screen, giving the average TV consumer about thirty seconds of biased reporting.
That is no way to inform the public for their most important political decision ever.
Instead of waiting for the main stream media to accurately and correctly give Americans the facts, I have decided to take on the challenge myself, and let the facts speak for themselves.
May the best man win.
Here are the issues I’ll be looking at over the next few months: I invite you to do your own investigations into my facts, or to seek your own information through various channels. One thing that is critical, however, is that whatever facts are presented must be verifiable by more than one source, and they cannot be the product of any campaign or Political Action Committee. The toughest part in evaluating these two men is to find unbiased facts that speak to their records on these topics:
Mental acuity
Inflation/Cost of living
Border/Immigration
Gaza/Ukraine & foreign affairs
Economy/Jobs
Democracy
Citizen’s Rights
Climate Change/Energy
Crime
Character
During the Clinton campaign of 1992, James Carville famously stated the most important issue was “it’s the economy, stupid.” Carville succinctly identified the most important issue a candidate needed to focus on: at that time, how the economy was going, to include job and wage growth, impacted Americans and their vote more than any singular thing. Clinton focused in on the economy, and pounded President George H.W. Bush when the economy floundered into recession. Clinton pounced on Bush mistakes, like not knowing the price of a loaf of bread, a seemingly unimportant thing to Bush but critically important to voters.
Clinton beat Bush in 1992, and the economy as a primary issue, has never been overlooked again.
I have taken liberties in devising my own list: while “the economy, stupid" is certainly key, it is not the only issue Americans will use to decide. So many are angered about relentless problems at the southern border. Millions are concerned about the ongoing changes to our climate and it’s terminal impact. Daily, we are reminded about prices going up on just about everything. And of course there is the never ending saga of war: from Gaza to Ukraine to Russia to NATO, how a leader handles foreign policy affects us all.
Americans must be better informed about the positions and record of each of these men: covering the economy and Middle East policy is simply not enough.
At the core of this election is the nature of our nation: one candidate has publicly stated he wants to “be a dictator just for the first day.” The other guy has stated that “we are in a battle for the soul of our nation.” If this sounds like a lot of rhetoric to you, it may be that rhetoric was used to throw you off, to distract from other issues like the economy and war. Rhetoric offers more, though, than a simple distraction: it serves to show us the character of the person, who they really are, and how they would serve as president.
Finally, I will look at the mental acuity of both men. One is 81, and recently announced he is “fit as a fiddle.” The other, soon to be 78, tries to tell us that the 81 year old is too old to serve while stumbling over his own words in speech after speech. When men age, their brains age: sometimes, that leads to wisdom, and sometimes it leads to dementia and decline. While I am not a psychologist, I will look at the state of mental affairs of both men fairly so you can decide.
While I am clearly a liberal, and voted for Joe Biden in 2020, I am doing this with the utmost open mind, something I fear most Americans refuse to use in choosing our next leader. Most in one camp or another have embedded themselves in cement with no plans of extricating themselves to switch sides.
But I read something today that opened my own mind. A guest columnist writing in The Oklahoman—a conservative paper based in very conservative Oklahoma—shared a nugget of wisdom with the world.
Jim Young, a self-described “staunch, almost redneck conservative, registered Republican, Oklahoman and American” starts off telling us that he voted for Trump—twice. Mr. Young details his conservative bona fides through a brief history of Christian values and Ronald Reagan, and is convincing with his summary that Joe Biden is one of “ the top five of the worst political leaders we have ever seen in this country’s history.”
Throughout the op-ed though, Mr. Young appears to evolve right before our eyes: while he may never embrace Joe Biden or liberal policies, Young shares that he became convinced that Trump is not his man either.
You might say Jim Young has had a change of heart.
Young shares the fact that he read Liz Cheney’s book “Oath and Honor, a Memoir and a Warning,” and was surprised by how much it surprised him. He followed that up by reading the Executive Summary produced by the January 6th Committee, and then read the Indictment filed against Trump by the Department of Justice. What astonished Young was the consistency of these three pieces, all painting a picture of Trump that Young had not yet seen: a man Young no longer considered presidential material.
Jim Young is no lackey for the Democratic Party: he has been a life-long conservative, and his opinion, which you can read here, does not endorse Joe Biden. But it does ask other conservatives to read Cheney’s book, to see for themselves the Trump that he saw, a man in Young’s own words:
“I do not understand how Donald Trump can possibly be considered as a legitimate candidate for the most important job in the world. Frankly, I don’t understand how he is not in jail right now.”
It was Liz Cheney’s book that helped open the eyes of Jim Young, and it was Jim Young’s op-ed that helped me open my eyes to evaluating both of these men based on facts and the truth—if we can find it.
I will do my utmost best in the coming months to find that truth, to share it here with you in all it’s glory without the rhetoric. I ask that you take the time to read the information presented, to digest it, decipher it, and determine for yourself its validity. From all of that, we will inform ourselves as to which of these two men is the best choice to lead our nation for the next four years.
May we discover that at least one of them is capable.
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