This was a rather stressful week, between dreadful weather and a major crisis at work. The snow we got last Sunday night just slowed down Monday morning's commute, but the freezing rain that came through on Tuesday was far worse. The Metro was running fine and I used my ice cleats to keep from sliding down Wilson Boulevard, so it wasn't a huge issue for me. As it was, we got dismissed from work three hours early on Tuesday. Except it was two hours from the end of the day by the time we actually got the news and I had something I had to finish, so I really only got out one hour early. The really bad commute was Friday morning and was not, apparently, weather related. They discovered a crack on the tracks downtown, so the Metro was being single-tracked through the area. My train sat at Clarendon for a half hour and, when I realized we would be stuck waiting again at Courthouse, I just got out and walked. I often walk from there anyway, but I don't usually do that when it's 10 degrees out. And the number of businesses that hadn't shoveled their sidewalks made it even more challenging.
As for the work crisis, let me just suggest that if you're going to completely restructure a program and, therefore, invalidate all of the budget documents, you might not want to do it the day after those documents have gone out. This is actually the right decision and it should have been made months ago, but the timing sucks from our standpoint. We're going to be a total laughing stock when we brief the congressional staffers this year. I already suggested that we get in a good supply of glycerin so we can all fake tears during the briefings.
Which brings me to the subject of politics. Since Virginia doesn't register voters by party, I'm somewhat puzzled about the integrity of the primary. What's to keep large numbers of Republicans from voting for, say, Carol Mosely Braun (who has already dropped out), in order to spoil the results? At least in the open primary system that Massachusetts used, you ended up enrolled in the party whose ballot you'd selected. You could go the next day and change your registration again, but that required some effort.
I've also been looking at various of the web sites which purport to match you to a candidate based on answering a few pages of questions. I won't bother to provide links because I think all of the sites I've seen miss several fundamental points. The issues they select are those that are the most controversial, but not necessarily ones I think are particularly relevant. Some of them let you rank the importance of particular issues, but none of them tells you how the candidates rank those issues. That's one of the big drivers for me. I don't want Presidential candidates to be wasting their breath on broad platitudes about education, because that isn't a federal matter. The leader of our nation should have better things to worry about than who wants to sleep with whom. (I'm still puzzled over all this kerfuffle over gay marriage. If an institution is so weak that it can be hurt by extending it to other people, it is not worth preserving.) And the elastic clause certainly doesn't stretch so far as to cover steroid use amongst baseball players.
The single biggest way the President can influence the future direction of the country is in the appointment of Supreme Court justices, and none of what I've seen even asks anything about the subject. I'm not surprised at that. You'd have to assume a fairly knowledgeable readership before you could even ask the relevant questions. It's far easier to stick to superficial controversies.
The other place where these quizzes miss is by focusing entirely on issues. Yes, the issues are important, but you could agree with many of a candidates views and still find him unsuitable. I don't want a Washington outsider who won't understand how to work within a complex system that resists change. I care about some issues a lot, but I also care about integrity and maturity. I want a President who will be willing to fall on his sword when it's important, but will compromise when it isn't. Just knowing that I'm fairly middle of the road, a social liberal and economic conservative, isn't enough to point me to the ideal candidate.
Oh, yes, I know who I plan to vote for. Do you?
Copyright 2004 Miriam H. Nadel