I continue to think that Ted Cruz is the best candidate. However, at this point we should perhaps take a sort of time out and focus more on what the nation requires and then return to assessing the people who have put their names forward.
The nation needs three things urgently. First, a return to limited government under the constitution. This is much more important than the campaign so far has managed to illustrate. It’s not just a matter of Obama being an exception — he’s really just an acceleration of a disturbing trend over three decades now (and probably more) towards a benign presidential dictatorship combined with an ineffectual hit or miss Congress and the scourge of judicial activism. This is more or less the perfect storm that left untackled will eventually sink the ship of state and turn America, even America, into a tin-pot banana republic. I would say in passing that Ted Cruz seems to get this more than any remaining candidate (Rand Paul also got it and I hope he finds a place in the next administration).
The second major priority is the economy. Such shallow gains as have been claimed by the current administration are mainly due to redefinitions of economic indices combined with puffed up inflation of the public sector and a certain number of poorly paid and transient part time positions. The next president will need to do whatever he or she can to stimulate real economic growth. This is why Trump is leading — he gives off the aura of a job creator but more needs to be done by the rest of the field in terms of testing out his plans and theories, and putting forward alternatives. Of course, as a small government libertarian leaning conservative, my philosophy is that the economy will do best if government stays the hell out of the way. This is most relevant to the climate change question. In my view, a great American president in the period 2016 to 2032 (and there can be two or three) will lead the fight to kill off this sacred cow hyped up false concern. The best thing to do about the climate is to enjoy it. I rather enjoyed golfing in sumnmer attire on February 9th (north of the border too).
And the third priority would be foreign policy. It would be a vast understatement to call the foreign policy of all western nations a farce and an unmitigated disaster since 2001. We have no overall guiding vision and every major ad hoc decision has been wrong, expensive, and counter-productive. Terrorism is of course a great moral evil but at the same time there is little if any point in cultivating foreign policies that will inevitably drive thousands of disaffected and/or crazy people to join terrorist groups. Once again, the priority for an American president will be to destroy the power of existing terrorists and take decisions on questions such as the outcome of the Syrian conflict that will avoid further appeal of new terrorist concepts. We can’t fix the problems of that part of the world, we can only contain them, and our best bet is to empower those we can trust to contain them for us. It was entirely irrational to depose Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khadafy, and I suspect that whatever his flaws, the same will be said of Bashir El-Assad although he has decided to dig in and try to survive anyway. And make no mistake, the only reason he is being portrayed as a monster is because it works for cynical ambitions of other regional powers who have their own designs on Syria. Anyone who proposes to govern in that part of the world has to be a bad-ass, the idea that a bunch of emigre shopkeepers in Paris and London can come home to run a Middle Eastern country is total nonsense.
Speaking of which, there is Bernie Sanders. One hopes he will slay the dragon then taste the sword himself in November. Big-time, because the last thing America needs (or might see) is communism. And if that ain’t communism, then it might as well be.
Well stated.
By the way, the problem with focusing on job creation is that true job creation is a side-effect of economic growth. (If you just wanted to create jobs, you could pay people to move piles of rocks around or engage in other useless activity; that could give you full employment, but the country would fall into poverty and depression.)
If we take Trump at face value and presume that he isn’t just trolling us, his big-government centralized-decision economic policies would be a big drag on the economy. He’s not a free-marketeer.
As for Bernie, he’s clearly a Marxist in that he analyzes everything through the prism of class conflict. We know where that always leads (it doesn’t matter whether he’s described as a democratic socialist, or a socialist democrat, or a communist, or just a one-note left-wing lightweight).