how to see in color
Today I went out and knocked on doors today for the No on I-933 campaign here in Washington State (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-933 for some information). It was a good experience. The volunteers and organizers were great to work with. The folks who were at home were pleasant and most of them took a few minutes to listen to the spiel. From this experience I learned (or re-learned) a few things:
1. Rarely are political issues as black and white as most people explain them. When I go to print something from Microsoft Powerpoint, I can print in pure black and white, grayscale, or color. Not meaning to make anyone too upset, but when you go to the Republican or Democratic National Committee, for instance, to get a take on an issue - it's like printing out a pure black and white copy. To continue the analogy - perhaps you could go to an objective scientist to get the "grayscale" view of the issue. But in order to get the full color view of the issue - I guess that's what responsible voters are trying to get at all the time. And remember - even though the complete picture of an issue is in color - don't forget there is still black and white to be found in it.
2. It's important to follow the money trail when trying to get your mind around an issue. That doesn't necessarily mean that if one side gets lots of money, it's a bad thing. However, if the money is coming mostly from just a few folks - that generally is a bad thing. Alternatively, if there are a lot of volunteers on a side of an issue, that is likely a good sign. Granted, an occcasional volunteer may act like somewhat of a knucklehead who sees things mostly in black and white. But those who aren't paid for political grassroots efforts are at the least being honest to their personal core values.
Having said that, if you were to compare the number of grassroots bloggers out there for Mitt Romney, to bloggers for other candidates, you'd see that there's a good sign for Mitt's side.
posted by publius5 at 11:59 PM
3 Comments:
I like your take on issues not always being cut and dried, black and white matters.
For example, when it comes to energy amny on one side tend to only talk about "alternative" or "renewable" sources, while the other tends to only talk about oil and coal. Mitt (and our current president to be completely fair to him)talks about both, Neither is a solution without the other.
Mitt talks about ANWR/offshore expanded drilling AND producing ethanol/biodiesel. We need both to solve our needs for liquid fuels for combustion engines of all sorts. Both are mentioned in item #5 of his 10-point plan for America.
You may notice I bring up energy alot in the posts here, but it is a big issue to me. I mentioned that Mitt's plan is really nothing outside of the current adminstrations plan. For whatever reason though, they have not done a good job of communicating it, even though the ploicies are very good. For example, President Bush last year passed a bill that would require the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline in this country to double by 2012.
President Bush for whatever reason does not articulate these good moves with the country however, and that is where Mitt will shine.
Good point about needing to talk about coming at the energy issue from both sides. I think it'll take a while for folks to look at Republicans and think energy conservation or renewable energy.
maybe so,
but we know we cant look at hardly any Democrats and find any of them willing to put partisan differences aside and be honest about our need for ANWR and other expanded domestic drilling, more refineries, increased coal mining production, or building new nuke plants, so they definately do not propose anything that is a solution.
It is a nice fantasy to pretend that we dont need these things, but at the end of the day that is all it is, fantasy and pretending.
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