We're quite a ways off from the next presidential election, and already I'm disappointed with everything about it. On the GOP side, there's the total unwillingness to admit that they have a fundamentally terrible person in office who lies, contradicts himself and has no decorum fit for the office, let alone respect for the Constitution, relative to any president in my lifetime from either party. (There is also the cognitive dissonance of his supporters over those same things that would easily disqualify any of us from any job ever, but I'll never solve that mystery.) On the Democratic side, there's a growing movement to swing the pendulum in the other extreme direction, which also sucks. Mind you, if it comes down to suffering through free college or dealing with policy that instills hate against women and every kind of minority, it's not a hard choice. There is no moral equivalence, but it's still a crappy choice to make.
The post I wrote three years ago describing my ideal candidate is unchanged. I'm not really into labels, but being socially liberal and fiscally conservative is a thing. They are not incompatible ideas, because when combined they usually result in common sense positions that tend to fall somewhere in the middle. You're at your most flexible when you stop trying to fit everything into an ideological box. My experience has been that, with age, this is a natural destination, but it seems like most people are hell bent on joining a tribe and not deviating from it as life goes on. I didn't really know anything in my 20's... why would I think like I'm still that age with everything I've seen since?
We have to do better than this.
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