convincible.org

David Brooks has a rather humorous article in today’s NYT.
Essentially, he points out Obama’s speeches sound good, but his record is far left and his “change” story appears to be somewhat standard politician speech. And it’s a really fun read. Enjoy it here:

Heres a fascinating view on the choice between McCain or Hilliary.

Glassbooth.org is an interesting website that asks your positions on some issues and then shows you which candidate best matches your opinions.
It’s a fun and maybe useful tool.
But personally, I was somewhat unhappy with the tool, as it seems really designed for voters with specific concerns about bullet issues of the day. It doesn’t take into account more nuanced positions or the philosophy of the candidates. Or what role the candidate thinks the president should have in government or on the issues. For instance, it asks about “Iraq and Foreign Policy” but doesn’t say anything about balancing the roles of our government, military vs internal, security vs social programs, etc. The issue of “Crime and Punishment” is reduced to only being about the death penalty. All of the issues are reduced like this to a slot question. Also, the quiz makes you value the various questions, without any judgment on whether the president can effect the item. Are we to assume the president who has one of these opinions will actually desire to make the change expressed? Without regard to the the constitutionality or the priority for the administration?
Just the way the first question is phrased is a problem; “Add points to the issues you find most important”. Shouldn’t the question be, “Add points to the issues int he way you think the next president should prioritize them in their administration”? I know thats a lot more complicated, but it’s really a different question, and a more important one.

- Ryan’s comments below sent me back to glassbooth.org to poke around some more. He is correct, there is more depth there than appears at first glance. If you put all your points in 2 issues, say 10 points in each of the two, you get many more questions about those issues. Interesting. I just wish it would ask me all the questions about all the issues, then I’d have a better feeling about the “test”. Maybe if it matched everything, I would feel like it was seeing more into my philosophical similarities with the candidate. But one or just a few questions on an issue might just reveal a particular bias on a point issue on my or the candidates side. Regardless, Ryan is correct, this site is better developed than I first thought.

Just watched it. Well…
Frankly, most of the opinions and statements seemed to be the same as what I had heard before. I guess the candidates feel the need to restate their positions for each set of primaries and the makes some sense.
But there was much “my opinion vs his opinion” especially with McCain and Romney. The candidates are trying to contrast each other, or to paint the other guy into a corner.
I wish I could like McCain better. When he rebooted his campaign, he came back as a straight talker. And he plays that for all it’s worth and I like that idea. But I’m put off by the mere sound bite addressing of the issues that is all we get in the debate.
Romney still strikes me as a bit slippery.
I didn’t hear much from Huckabee.
Ron Paul seems frighteningly attractive when he talks about the constitution. But when he talks about what he would actually do he scares me.
So what do we do with that? I think at this point there are two things I want to consider.
- Who are these people away from the debate sound bite mill? Are their detailed positions and explantaions more coherent and worthy of consideration? I’m more concerned with the candidates philosophy and how that leads them to their positions. The question there is, can they convince me?
- What is more important; to have a candidate whose positions I agree with or a candidate whose morality I agree with more? And lets avoid “moral rationalization” when we say that. Follow the link for a fantastic article from the New York Times on “The Moral Instinct”.

Since my last post in mid-January, my favorite candidates have all dropped out. Biden and Thompson are gone, the two guys I liked best, at least as far as I knew them. Giuliani was seemed clear and logical and although I had some real issues with him, I’m sorry to see him fall by the wayside.
So on the Republican side we have the following left:

John McCain
Mitt Romney
Mike Huckabee
Ron Paul

On the Democrat side we have:

Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton

So the field is a lot narrower as we rush to Super Duper Tuesday, and the bulk of the nation gets a chance to finally voice an opinion. Sometimes I think I’d prefer a national primary, maybe some kind of national runoff system…