Quality Candidates

Liberals, and a lot of conservatives, are fulminating about the low quality of the slate of Republican presidential candidates. Romney is remote, Perry is a yahoo, Bachmann is a nutcase, etc. I can’t really disagree with any of that, although I think quite a bit of it is overblown.

Still, Democrats only have one candidate, and he is calling for simultaneous passage of two bills by the legislature; one which calls for increased spending and tax cuts, and another which calls for spending cuts and tax increases. I’m not accusing him of being a “nutcase,” but it’s hard to say that constitutes a coherent economic policy message.

Obama accompanies his contradictory appeals with a lot of erudite rhetoric and some very clever insults aimed at the Republican Party, and throws in a good bit of cheerleading, and sometimes it’s a bit difficult to discern which bill he’s talking about at any given moment. It’s almost as if his plan is to keep us sufficiently off balance that we won’t have a clue what’s going on.

Now, it’s true that one bill is short term and the other long term, but he never really conveys that with any clarity and the long term bill, the one for “deficit reduction,” is not planned to delay the start until the short term bill is finished, they are both supposed to take effect immediately.

So our choice seems to be between stupidity and incoherence.