Ideas Matter!
Ideas Matter! – Volume One
After a discussion over on BC today, I started wondering how many people are actually paying attention to the words coming out of politicians mouths as opposed to the "look and feel" of a candidate. Today someone said about Mitt Romney, "I do not want him as President, no matter how attractive or wealthy he may be." Another person, in describing his view of Obama’s placement on the political spectrum, said "well, the most extremely liberal people I know (self described) are flocking to him, so that sort of gives me a hint. "
The fellow who made the second statement (kdawg68) agreed with me that too often we filter our views of candidates through the positive or negative media coverage or our opinion of the candidates more vocal supporters. In this, the Information Age, we can go right to the source and read our candidates positions in their own writing, but too often, we do not. Once people select a candidate, they too often, tune out new information about their chosen person or the other possible candidates. We need to address ideas and not personalities. Character matters, but an honest idiot is not going to the help this country.
With that in mind, I decided to try an experiment. I am going to include excerpts from speeches political writing with the names and serial numbers filed off so to speak, to get people’s reaction to the ideas expressed. Please comment on whether or not the ideas expressed in this speech appeal to you and make you like the politician saying it more or less. If you know who spoke these words, please do not mention it in your comment until I reveal it later. Any blanks are simply there to eliminate words or names that would indicate who said or wrote the text.
EDIT: Based on one comment that came in, I realize I should make this clearer. The following is from one speech by one person so it should be taken as a whole.
I realize that many of you have not believed that we really have an energy problem. But _____ has made all of us realize that we have to act.
Now, the Congress has already made many of the preparations for energy legislation. _______ is beginning to direct an effort to develop a national energy policy. Many groups of Americans will be involved. On ________ we will have completed the planning for our energy program and will immediately then ask the Congress for its help in enacting comprehensive legislation.
Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves in an environmentally sound way; we will emphasize research on solar energy and other renewable energy sources; and we will maintain strict safeguards on necessary atomic energy production.
The responsibility for setting energy policy is now split among more than 50 different agencies, departments, and bureaus in the Federal Government. ________ I will ask the Congress for its help in combining many of these agencies in a new energy department to bring order out of chaos. Congressional leaders have already been working on this for quite a while.
We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is no way we can solve it quickly. But if we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive. Utility companies must promote conservation and not consumption. Oil and natural gas companies must be honest with all of us about their reserves and profits. We will find out the difference between real shortages and artificial ones. We will ask private companies to sacrifice, just as private citizens must do.
All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.
There is no way that I, or anyone else in the Government, can solve our energy problems if you are not willing to help. I know that we can meet this energy challenge if the burden is borne fairly among all our people–and if we realize that in order to solve our energy problems we need not sacrifice the quality of our lives.
Please comment and let me know if you think the ideas expressed by this politician speaks to your own feelings and positions. The next entry in this series and the owner of the words above will be posted on Friday.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it a trick question. I never said it was one of the candidates currently running for the presidency. I can see how easy that would be for some people to assume.
Since you are running Ubuntu, feel free to guess early. :)
Will, you can IM me your guess and I will confirm it if you like. And thanks for the heads up about ShareThis. I’ll try to figure it out.
Are we allowed to guess? I want to win a prize! LOL! Seriously though, even if a speech like this speaks to us as individuals and even if we agree with the premises in it, the politics of implementing grand plans almost always prevents that implementation. I know I am more cynical than many about our government’s ability to do even 10% of what really should be done, but even a President with the best of intentions is prevented from putting most of their ideas into practice.
I agree with Christine that it picks up steam, gets more specific, and does more to point out that government can’t go it alone, as the excerpt goes along. It does speak to many of my own ideas and feelings. Unfortunately these ideas and feelings of mine have been looking for solutions and implementation from our leaders for 30 years or more. It is hard for me to have faith that new leadership a year from now will do any better than the past 6 or 8 administrations and Congresses have.
You know, come to think of it, I have been keeping our thermostat at 60 during the day and 50 at night for all of the aforementioned 30 years, so maybe there is hope for my faith yet.
Its those specifics that we lose with the current media coverage of the candidates. Lapel pins get more air time than energy policy.
Also, I never said that speech was by a current politician. :)
I stand corrected. Thanks for the heads up. In that case… the speech as a whole has some good content… and it makes sense… getting more specific as they go along. At least this candidate is trying… would like to see more about how these changes would play out it real time…. and compare them to other people’s stances.
Seems to me they are all blowing the same hot air… just from different valves. The third to last one seems fairly reasonable or well spoken. The 4th to last one gives concrete.. or something resembling concrete… governmental changes that would be made. This is such a popular topic though… pretty much everyone is trying to be the good guy with environmental issues… or pretend to be. Try a topic that clearly defines party platform lines and compare how the ideas diverge. Also… context matters.