On "The Race" (Being on that is)

My friend Tom Bestor, who has an excellent blog of his own, http://www.rationalfeast.blogspot.com/, has I fear fallen into the same trap as the horse race obesessed mainstream media and has written with great glee about the pending primary races that will now command our attention, at least through February 5th, and perhaps beyond, depending on outcomes.

But, here's the problem. The longer we continue to focus on polls, and races, and candidates jibes at one another, both intra-party and across parties, the less we focus on what is really important. And that is, do any of these people running for President have a vision, a plan, the right character to propel this country forward into recovering from what (in January of 2009), will be possibly the most disastrous administration of the country in our history - one that has damaged our standing in the world, possibly made us the most fearful nation in the world with less civil liberties than when (this administration) started, and on and on?

And, does the country really care about solving big problems like global warming, healthcare, imbalances of trade and the declining dollar; restoring our image and integrity in the world (and getting us out of Iraq without it devolving into a complete disaster)? Is there anyone that can articulate what the right balance of government services vs. private sector involvement should be in any areas of our lives? Is there anyone that can articulate how to raise the necessary levels of our education system to keep this country the leader, economically and innovatively in this century - and that is willing to have a bold vision for the country, akin to going to the moon, to drive new, clean technologies that will deliver us from giving more and more petrodollars to people that hate us, not to mention saving humanity from itself with a bold plan on making us all more green?

I know I live in a bubble of liberalism here in the Bay Area, but it feels more and more to me that some kind of a national dialogue is needed about what kind of a country we want to be and how we should be organizing ourselves to both continue to lead globally as well as how to prepare ourselves for both the ongoing war of secularism vs. fundamentalism (from all religions), and the emergence of developing countries like India and China? What do we want our relationships to be to these various sectors of the world and how will we engage with them?

Instead we have useless arguments about whether Obama has enough experience, whether Hillary is too politically motivated and poll driven, whether Rudy is conservative enough for the guns and abortion crowd, whether Mitt flip-flops on everything, who's tougher on immigrants, who was against the war before they were for it before they were against it and a host of petty character jabs that have nothing to do with actually running the country - blah, blah, blah.

I suppose we'll have to endure more of the same of all of this until they decide who should run against whom and then we can see if we can try and discern whether anyone really cares about the actual differences between the two candidates, or whether in the end it will, once again, just come down to the apathetic American voter and who they would rather have a beer with.

Depressing.