The Official Presidential Debate Thread (Round 3)

[12thMan]

Originally Posted by Hog1

Not easy for me to answer. IMO
Perhaps someone that would tend to rally more of the country than divide it. Someone who offers real answers....that actually work, not just lip service to gather in the masses.
The Fed has become a juggernaut feeding mostly those sworn to serve it, and punishing mostly those meant to benefit from it.
Those that crafted this gov't would no longer recognize it. The times have naturally changed, but the essence and intention of this..........democracy have not, or rather should not. It's broken, and it needs to be repaired. We are ridiculouly entrenched in things like political correctness, and have lost our ability to tell the truth. As a result, we can no longer do things that make sense for fear of making somebody mad. But Tooo much wealth is in the balance and it may be untenable after all.
Who can fix it?
Someone unafraid to state what the problems are. We're broke, Immigration is killing us. The welfare, and other assistance programs are un-workable, rewarding many that do not need it and building walls against those that do. We cannot begin more programs that do not work and serve only to pirate more hard earned tax money without reform and accountability of what already exists.
Who can fix it? Reagan? JFK?
In the early going, I thought Fred Thompson, or possibly Rudy might have something to say. Obviously, it was not enough. On the other side of the line, John Edwards literally F... himself out of things.........
Who? Not really sure!
Most importantly, talk is cheap........show me
Important safety tip: caution, diatribe in progress

I think your last couple of lines summed up best. Show me. You don't know, until you know. Even if we look back into history, many of the Presidents that people perceive to be great once they left office, gave many Americans pause while they were actually running for office. I've talked to a few old timers who were around when JFK was running, and they weren't too impressed with him at the time. Some still aren't. You talk to almost any Republican today, and Ronald Reagan's name is probably in the top five when you ask them to name five great Presidents the GOP have produced over time. But when he ran for President, his opponents tried to paint him as an empty Hollywood suit.

I think we had a good pool of candidates to choose from on both sides of the aisle this year. I really do. If I were to change hats for a second and support, say, a Republican candidate. I probably would have chosen someone like Mike Huckabee. Not that I agree with his policies so much, but he seems tempered, comes across as sensible, and has a great sense of humor. And I get the gut feeling the dude is honest. I actually think he wouldn't do a horrible job running the country.

Running for President, more than anything else, proves ones fitness for the office once they get there. On many levels. For instance, a few weeks ago, I watched Fred Thompson give a very energetic speech during the RNC. I mean this guy was tearing Obama and the Dems a new you know what during his speech. Freddy had the crowd climbing up the walls. But when he was running for office, he came across lack luster often times and seemed to lack ideas. And I thought to myself, it's not that Thompson, if he were in office, wouldn't be a good President. It's just that the grind of campaigning day in and day out, separates the men from the boys. It's one thing to give a speech and light up a crowd and another thing to do it daily, enduring the day to day rigors of running for President. Mike Huckabee now has his own talk show on Fox. Which is great. And Rudy Giuliani now appears on the talk show circuit, almost, on a daily basis.

I guess what I'm getting at, is that it's not that we lack good leaders with bold ideas that can bring about change, it's just that only a handful actually punch through with their message…and probably just as important now a days, their money.