18 Comments
We love the Columbia Political Union, we really do–but would it have killed them to have made their election guide read a little less like an obituary? It is comprehensive; all the candidates are there, in sensible Times New Roman–even Mike “Who do you want to nuke?” Gravel has his own page. The Columbia Dems and Republicans got their obligatory space up front, in which the Dems urged us all to “think deeply” about the candidates and the GOP, in an essay entitled “Why you should vote Republican in 2008,” didn’t even try to convince us. The Columbia Libertarians, who’ve gotten the better press of both of them, were conspicuously absent.
Nonetheless, there is a place in the world for blandness. We have no doubt that the CPU at least takes its objectivity seriously, and that they must have learned a lot putting this together. The FEC, we’ve heard, has decent job security.
– LBD
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18 Comments
@correction **throw. It’s late.
@audacity (that was in reply to 10)
@audacity You’re precisely right about Obama. I can’t stand listening to him through around these empty catch-phrases, and attaching hardly any meaning to them at all. “Hope,” “The politics of change,” … Then, he perpetually insists that we shouldn’t have such a “hard-line” position against our adversaries- that we should be “negotiating” with all countries, even those that sponsor terror across the globe.
@right... right…
@ugly All the publications on campus, moreover, are ugly, with the exception of the Jester and Esoterica Eclectica, and maybe Tablet.
@the columns is undergoing major revisions and is going to be back in January
@Ruffles I
@it's a start I thought it was a good introduction to all the candidates. Pretty quick and easy to read. A shame bwog gets so bored and cynical so easily.
@seriously maybe if they were airdropping this into new hampshire it would be helpful, but people at columbia tend to be pretty well informed about the candidates…
@EAL Unless the candidates are Republicans of course, in which case they are viewed (sadly) as the spawn of Satan.
That said, it wouldn’t hurt to be more informed about any of the candidates. If people actually knew anything about Obama’s stance on foreign policy and defense (which is pretty naive, IMHO), maybe they’d think twice about supporting him. I get the feeling that most people like him because he uses vague yet inspiring phrases like “audacity of hope” and manages to speak well, even though his positions on certain issues are not realistic.
@Informed? Sorry, I gotta disagree. I don’t think people here are generally that well informed about the candidates. First, a lot of people are apathetic, especially SEAS people. In my experience, hardly any SEAS kids I know ever really give a damn. Second, same is true for a lot of CC students. And even those who try to follow it don’t know all that much. Just read J.D. Porter’s last column and the comments in response to it; Porter, I’m sure, cares about the election but doesn’t exhibit much knowledge of the candidates other than the glib idea that Obama and Hillary are really different on Iraq since he opposed it and she didn’t.
@:-) link… http://blog.cupolitics.org/
@:-) what’s up with the CPU “columns” blog?
all these blogs come and go… only bwog survives!
@spectator It’s insanely dull writing and I actually didn’t find it that informative. The truth is pretty much anyone could visit a few campaign sites (see their work cited page), and compile the same information.
I think they dropped the ball on this one, maybe in the future CPU could try to attack it from a different angle. Maybe how the candidate’s policies affect a youth audience.
@yes, but... they could visit the sites and look up the information on their own, but they Don’t. that is precisely the point of presenting the information to them all in one package.
@In their defense, It is a little tough to write in a non-partisan, serious way, and still be interesting.
@0.o Obama’s head is conspicuously large in the picture.
@equivalent statement Obama’s head is conspicuously large.