Americans want 'real deal' for next president

TheStar.com ^ | December 22, 2007 | Tim Harper

[greyfoxx39]

WASHINGTON – It's the word you hear in drafty Iowa gyms where voters gather to shop for a candidate, on the cable news outlets where the analysts ponder the imponderables, in the endless drip, drip, drip of email endorsements.

Authenticity.

It has become the buzzword of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, and the authenticity test appears to be shaping the race.

The next American president will have to be – or perceived by voters to be – the real deal. He or she must be consistent and appear to believe what they are saying, without the political artifice and calculation that savvy voters in Iowa and New Hampshire so easily reject.

Authenticity and character have always been strong drivers of campaign success, but four years ago at this point Iowa Democrats relied on electability above all else when they propelled John Kerry to their party's nomination.

-SNIP-

McCain began airing a campaign ad in New Hampshire Wednesday, trying to play to this strength.

"One man warned us we were failing in Iraq, and told us how we could turn things around," the voice-over says.

"He took a lot of heat, but he stood by what he knew was right. Today that strategy is working."

McCain then says: "I didn't go to Washington to win Mr. Congeniality. I went there to serve my country."

He has picked up a spate of newspaper endorsements, and almost all go to the authenticity issue.

"In an age when too many candidates are driven by polls and focus groups, fashioning and refashioning their `core' beliefs, McCain is a man of unwavering conviction and integrity," the Boston Herald said.

Romney, the man derided as having "anchorman" hair and being a late conservative convert on the road to Des Moines, has big authenticity problems.

In recent days, he has mischaracterized a National Rifle Association endorsement and admitted he didn't really see, as he claimed in a major speech, his late father, former Michigan governor George Romney, march with Martin Luther King.

Maybe that's why the former Massachusetts governor has begun to tear up on the trail, getting emotional on Meet the Press twice in one interview, once discussing the 1978 change in his Mormon religion to allow blacks into the priesthood and again talking about seeing bodies coming back from Iraq.

"I have five boys of my own. I imagine what it would be like to lose a son."

It might be why this week he began running an ad in New Hampshire, recounting his role in the search for a colleague's 14-year-old daughter who went missing in New York in 1996.

But Goldford issues a warning to both Romney and Clinton, who are now trying to prove their authenticity with ads.

"It only works if it doesn't look obvious," he said

MORE

[freekitty]

I am with Duncan because he is the real deal.

[Solitar]

Though Gore would have been an improvement over Clinton, he may also have then been able to use his Presidency to win against Bush — then we would have been up the creek. Maybe Fred saw that.

[Route66]

Fred Thompson. The Real Deal.

[Navy Patriot]

if Clinton were removed from office, the man who would have replaced him would have been Al Gore.

Good point. It seems the uberleftie Rat traitors learn by observation, as they squeal for the impeachment of Bush AND Cheney so as not to be caught in the same conundrum.

[MNJohnnie]

I know, I know. Don’t bother you with the truth! You cannot be bothered with anything so pedestrian as fact or logic!. You have your freak fringer radio host slogans and you are sticking to them!

[kinghorse]

Doesn’t matter who it is, Romney, Guiliani, McCain, Thompson - Rick Perry will be the VP choice.

[Politicalmom]

Right. I guess that’s why he voted to convict.

[wolfcreek]

Can you imagine what they would look like without the vertical stripes? LOL!

[DTogo]

Tell all that to the families of Ramos and Compean, or the next victims of illegal alien crime.

[gotribe]

There aren’t any in this bunch.

[tarheelswamprat]

Though Gore would have been an improvement over Clinton, he may also have then been able to use his Presidency to win against Bush — then we would have been up the creek. Maybe Fred saw that.

A more plausible explanation is that the Clintons threatened to use their own M.A.D. "nuclear option" - the 2000 plus (not the 800-900 figure commonly cited) missing FBI raw confidential files containing enough dirt to destroy most of the members of the Senate - if the Senate leadership didn't back off and rig the game so that the problem would just fizzle-out and fade-away.

This accounts for the unprecedented closed-door session where the Senate voted 99-0 in a secret vote to change the long-established rules for the presentation of evidence and conduct of the trial. These changes made it impossible for Henry Hyde and the House impeachment managers to present a real case and get a fair hearing, and guaranteed that the American people would never see the bulk of the evidence. From the moment of that 99-0 secret vote to change the rules and rig the game, the rest of the Clinton impeachment process was mere political theater.

I would truly love to know what actually went on in that closed-door Senate session, but I doubt we ever will - the political code of omerta will probably hold. I suspect it was simply a case of the Clintons letting it be known that if he was going down, they'd take the rest of them with them. Presented with that threat, even Senators who were not personally vulnerable to the threat probably concluded that this would effectively bring down the American government, so they went along "for the good of the country".

If that was indeed their rationale, however, I personally believe that in the long run it will prove to have been misguided.

[Earthdweller]

Bush is a globalist's son and is surrounded by globalists. What did ya'll expect?

The fact that the liberal media hates him should tell you he is as close to a rebel of the socialist establishment as you are going to get from the American liberal monarchies (silver spoons).

No more dynasty candidates...we have reached the predictable end of the line on both sides of the isle. The more cushioned life they live the more socialist they become.

Bush always believed every word he said and he was honest. It's your fault you didn't listen.

[Blake#1]

Thanks MNJohnnie for supporting American values. There are a lot of Mike Savage wackos, that hate GWB, posting here on the FREEPS. Why the “hate” is most interesting. I have not figured it out yet. However, their “hate” IMHO, springs from the fact Bush got a date for the senior prom and they did not.

[Squantos]

I see NO real deal candidate running at this point. Once again it may come down again too the lesser of two evils IMO.....

[P-Marlowe]

A more plausible explanation is that the Clintons threatened to use their own M.A.D. "nuclear option" - the 2000 plus (not the 800-900 figure commonly cited) missing FBI raw confidential files containing enough dirt to destroy most of the members of the Senate - if the Senate leadership didn't back off and rig the game so that the problem would just fizzle-out and fade-away.

More plausible?

That is tinfoil hat stuff.

The fact of the matter is that given the choice between Bill Clinton and Al Gore, I would gladly pick Bill Clinton. Al Gore is certifiably insane. Bill is just a self centered egotistical womanizer. Clinton did nothing and let the country go into the toilet. Gore would have flushed it.

[BlueDragon]

Americans want 'real deal' for next president

• He also backed the Bush troop surge plan for Iraq – so fervently, some Democrats began calling it the "McCain doctrine" – when the move was highly unpopular.

• Yet, as voters are looking at him again in a remarkably fluid Republican race, the surge, by almost any measure, has been a success and McCain has been vindicated.

• But Goldford issues a warning to both Romney and Clinton, who are now trying to prove their authenticity with ads.
  "It only works if it doesn't look obvious," he said.

  [now exiting, to go search for my asbestos undershorts!]

[AlaskaErik]

"I have five boys of my own. I imagine what it would be like to lose a son.

No worries. Your military avoiding sons will never come home that way from Iraq or Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I saw way too many flag covered coffins while I was serving in Afghanistan.