Oliver Roup’s Blog

Ben Smith’s blog (link courtesy Matt Drudge of all places) has a clip of Obama talking thoughtfully about Ronald Reagan. I find the ability to look across the aisle and see the good in the other side tremendously appealing although I’m not so confident that the democratic rank and file will see it the same way. (Obama previously mentioned Republicans he’d consider in a hypothetical cabinet and it didn’t take long for the Edwards campaign to slam him for it. )

Whenever I’m discussing politics with someone I always ask them if they had to have a president from “the other party” (whichever party that is) who would they pick? To me the answer to this question says a lot about whether you can listen to what the other side is saying or are blindly partisan.

My answer to that question by the way is John McCain.

Update: As suspected, the rivals pounce.

The always insightful Scott Adams has a hillarious new blog post: Atheists: The New Gays

While I think many Atheists have an unfortunate tendency to be evangelical about their non-belief, I do think that recent events have made atheism more publicly acceptable in America than ever, even if it’s unfortunate that it’s at the expense of Muslims. I personally very much doubt that Bill Gates will ever run for president and I think it would be easy to go overboard with the “Billionaire as benevolent dictator” meme. Think, what if it were Larry Ellison?

It’s 6am the morning after the election and the democrats have done it. They’ve taken control of the house and the Senate is still up for grabs. Montana and Virginia are too close to call. If the democrats take both of those, they’ll have control of the Senate too, 51:49.
While I’m very pleased with this result, I’m afraid that the Democrats will get the wrong message, that the people of America somehow voted for them. They did not. This election was about turfing out the incumbents and the Democrats were the available alternative. The Republicans are smart. They will re-think and re-tool and in 2008 they will be back with a vengeance. If the Democrats don’t have an actual leadership plan (as opposed to just opposing the Republicans) all those hard fought gains will be lost.

I was pretty inspired by the speech Arnold Schwarzennegger gave at the 2004 Republican convention where he described why he is a Republican and why he thought everyone else should be too. The funny thing is I can imagine how if your initiation to politics is watching Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan, you’d make that decision too.

The Democrats need to decide the list of things they’re for and then be behind those things even if it means siding with Republicans.
I see three key areas that matter to me. The party that is for these things is the party I will vote for:

1. Fair, Reality-Based and Success-Driven
2. Socially Non-Interfering
3. Sustainable

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