As the track narrows for presidential candidates vying to win their Party’s nomination, the room for missteps is dwindling away.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s cutthroat race for the Democratic nomination has created a split team of supporters looking for a post-Bush savior. At Pipe Dream, our desire is not as ardent for rescue as it is for change, and though it has become a popular college standard to be an Obama enthusiast, and though the aura of idealism surrounding his campaign can be — at times — inspiring, the movement is fanciful.
We understand the powerful pull toward change, but the benefit of Clinton’s race is that she holds both the promise of progress and the advantage of knowing what she stands for and what she’ll do.
And, despite Obama’s flowing rhetoric and trendy following, he lacks Clinton’s intrinsic understanding of the issues that we, as citizens and students and conscious members of the global community, care deeply about. Truly, what we must care about; Obama’s charm and good looks are essentially his calling card, and though Clinton’s baby-kissing abilities seem canned, uncoordinated and constructed, they should not be the weight by which we as voters judge her.
As an intelligent and articulate woman, Hillary knows her platforms. She knows her opponents’ platforms. And she knows the ins and outs of every issue candidates deal in.
Her plans for making higher education more affordable are absolutely geared toward public universities and protecting students from unfair loan practices — her plan is to pump nearly a billion dollars in grants to community colleges and four-year institutions.
And while she does not support gay marriage (she advocates civil unions), her firm defense of a woman’s right to choose is admirable.
Despite yesterday’s breaking story in The New York Times that John McCain may have had a romantic relationship with a lobbyist in 2000, he seems to be, without a doubt, the better Republican candidate — given that his opponent is a creationist with a name only Jim Hensen could love.
McCain straddles a bizarre line between conservatives and progressives, and his double-dipping intrigues us.
Though die-hard conservative Republicans may feel uneasy about his firm stance on torture (it also inspires us to see a candidate who so fully knows and recognizes the horrors of war), McCain is a War Hawk at heart. His defense of the Bush administration’s handling of the war is disappointing, considering McCain’s experiences in Korea and his seemingly praise-worthy age of service in the Senate.
But McCain is, at least, the lesser of two or three evils — a stark contrast to Clinton, the better of two.