A Good Question

Another blogger I visit -- Christina Jade -- apparently has a somewhat regular thing she does, usually on Fridays, but sometimes on Mondays ;-). She calls it The One Thing.

She asks readers to name The One Thing, and has a question on a variety of topics (for example, name The One Thing that you look for most in a stimulus bailout program that allows you a girlfriend/boyfriend like the one former NY Governor Spitzer bought hisself?).

This week, she asked her readers to name The One Thing that you look for the most in a candidate.

When I visited, there had only been a few answers, from some lengthy but well-expressed ones, to a tongue-in-cheek one from another of my blogging buds.

Amazingly, I found it easy to have a quick, The One Thing answer to the question posed. And nowadays, it's even easier to want this the most in a candidate one would find support-worthy: credibility.

Alas, it's easier to want, than to find.

I don't find credibility, not when a candidate campaigns on hope and change, and having the most transparent administration in modern times, only to constantly renege on the transparency. Not when a candidate campaigns on being a uniter and not a divider, and then weighs into a small town local issue and, without knowing all the facts, blames one side and irresponsibly cites it as proof of racial profiling, when it's proven to be nothing of the sort.

Not when a married candidate campaigns on self-responsibility, a good moral compass and religious foundation, only to have an affair with his intern. Not when a candidate achieves the epitomy of power in the US House of Representatives, and uses that position to enrich herself through her legislation and bully pulpit, a gross conflict of interest and self-service at the expense of the public good. Not when other candidates talk fiscal responsibility, and then spend money in Congress like drunken sailors on a 72 hour liberty that goes on for years.

Not when a candidate takes demonstrated tax cheats, and puts them in control of the nation's money supply. Not when a candidate bypasses a key leg of the Constitutionally-established government triad -- the legislative branch -- and brings in a growing number of "czars", answerable for their actions only to him and no one else.

Not when a candidate takes an oath to protect his constituents, the USA and Constitution, and then votes on bills that he/she has never read, has no idea what's in them, and doesn't think it's important for the public to know what's in them. Not when an elected official's administration establishes a "snitch on opponents" program that smacks of the Nazis and Stalin's odious apparatus for controlling dissent.

Name The One Thing that you look for the most in a candidate. I look for credibility.

Someone who says I believe in this, this and this, and then goes out and not only says it, but stands for and lives it.

Christina Jade asked a helluva question there. Wouldn't more of you like to see a candidate that lived it the way he/she campaigned it?

Of course, it's our fault that we don't demand it be so. And too many of us don't. We have the power to. Many very fine young men and women have served and died, protecting that power, and our right to exercise it through our vote.

We owe it to them, to ourselves, and to the future, to make up for that. And we best get started on it, in 2010.

Name The One Thing that I look for the most in a candidate: credibility. If you're a candidate on my ballot, and your words and deeds to me aren't matched by your history and prior actions...you ain't got it.

And my vote, you won't get, either.

Good one, Christina Jade. I hope this real teachable moment it isn't wasted.