Iowa Has Spoken

So the Iowa Caucus was yesterday and Obama and Huckabee emerged victorious. I'm not gonna bother to share my views or make this website in anyway partisan, I'll just say that when i read the results of the caucus this morning I found myself unpleasantly surprised. Not by the results, but rather by my ignorance at the significance of the results.

I realized that I really didn't know much about the candidates. I think that I, as most people my age at this point, know enough to engage in a surface conversation about the candidates but wouldn't be able to seriously delve into what the major platforms for the candidates are, what fires them up the most. For example if President Bush was running now, we would know that his platform would be American Security at the expense of nearly anything. This would be his big issue, tax cuts would be there, but not as big, and immigration reform is on the table underneath some papers. But I couldn't tell you whether Obama gets more emotional about the War in Iraq, social security, creating jobs, or stem cell research. I guess everyone knows these basics:

Obama = liberal = big government, redistribute wealth, nationalized institutions of aid, etc.

Huckabee = republican = smaller government, southern baptist preacher, Arkansas governor, supports privatization, tax cuts for the businesses that drive the economy, etc.

I figured people are going to be talking about this, and since I didn't want to either a)be left out by my ignorance or b)try to talk about something which I don't know much about and make a fool of myself by saying something completely erroneous. So I looked them up, perused their bios, read a few speeches, tried to get a taste of where their priorities really were, and was appalled by both.

Granted, Huckabee's lunacy is much more overt, it's no less dangerous. It's a shame the country is too large at this point to revert back to electing people who genuinely don't want the Office and reluctantly serve out of loyalty to their country. Idealism aside, I strongly encourage you, dear reader, to read up a bit about the candidates, they all deviate from party norms on some stances, and there might be some surprises in there for you.

One thing I did notice, I think Huck and Obama have the best smiles on the campaign, now this may be a coincidence, but there might be something to the fact that they look more friendly than Hillary, Johnny boy, Mitt, even Good Ol' Fred.

This being a blog about government work, not the government in general, I don't plan on posting much about the election, but if I get bored and nothing absurd happens I might throw something up time and again. In the meantime, let's hope that whoever gets elected is able to garner support and respect from the entire country, not just their die-hard followers.

Now, have a fran-freakin-tastic Friday, I can't wait to go home and take a nap, only 6.5 hours to go.