Dog Botherer

I turned 18 in 1992, which means my first opportunity to vote for president was Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush. Or as hindsight has christened him, "the good Bush." Of course we didn't know he was the good one at the time. There was never really any chance that I was going to vote for him. I don't know that I could even tell you what any of his policy positions were in any detail, I just know that he was kind of a dick to MTV News' Tabitha Soren, with whom I was at the time desperately in pretend love. And thus a white-hot, unthinking, lifelong affiliation to a political party was born. It seems shallow, but remember: I was getting my sophisticated political analysis from MTV News. Depth wasn't exactly my thing back then.

For some reason, the hindsighters like to point to Clinton playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall as some kind of political touchstone moment for Generation Xers like myself, which I never really got. I mean, it was a saxophone. The only thing that tells me? Band nerd. And worse: school band jazz ensemble band nerd. He went on television and butchered "Heartbreak Hotel," a song that was old when my dad was born. Yeah, that really spoke to my political soul. Actually, my positive feelings for Clinton (as opposed to my anti-Bush-ness) were based more around his reputation as a pussy hound. This was a band nerd AND a student government dweeb. If he was out there slinging it around with a two-count hit of social leprosy like that, there was hope for me too.

My full accounting of presidential voting then went: Clinton-Clinton-Gore-Kerry-Obama. All Dems. My distaste for Kerry as a candidate was bordering on Romneyan, but he ran against what will remain in my mind the worst president since that pointy-faced one from 24. You know, the one between the black guy and the lady. That was only partisanship in the way Titanic survivors favored floating bits of flotsam to the grip of icy death in the bottomless deep.

I fancy myself an open-minded, free thinker. I lie to myself and say I'd consider voting for a Republican, but if I'm being honest, it's only if a Republican came out and said a bunch of things no Republican would ever say. The socially libertarian, religion-has-no-place-in-politics conservative died with Barry Goldwater. The sliding spectrum is moving so steadily to the right, by this time in 2020, Ronald Reagan will have been an appeasement-minded, tax-and-spend, anti-movementarian traitor. So there doesn't appear to be any room amongst Republican candidates to appeal to even a centrist votership without a serious fear of being eventually pitchforked to death.

I guess in the meantime, if I'm looking to qualify for my bipartisan bona fides, I'll have to settle not for a GOP candidate who appeals to what I want as a voter, but just one who exercises a little bit of personal consistency and intellectual honesty. Maybe it's not the best year to go looking for something like that when all we've got are the plasticine Romneys and the volcanically eructational Gingrich.

I've decided my only potential chance to not vote for Obama would have to be Rick Santorum. This quote is making the internet rounds:

“This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”

Say what you want, but that isn't a mealy-mouthed position shot through with cognitive dissonance at best and rank, unvarnished cynicism at worst. If Mitt Romney asked what it would take to get my vote and I said "A pony," I think he'd find a way to imply I could, with confidence, invest in a small stable or other outdoor housing shelter of roughly pony size.

If I said the same thing to Rick Santorum, he'd probably take me aside and deliver a stern lecture about how beginning down this path would eventually lead me to want to fuck the pony. Is it bullshit? Is it a quasi-fascist attack on basic human dignity? Yes it is. But notice: he doesn't really take the time to pretend it isn't. When his position involves limits on personal freedoms, he says "I am against personal freedoms." It's shockingly refreshing.

I don't have to vote for it. But I can respect it.

Just to be clear, I don't respect it. People shouldn't respect things that are stupid. But you know, it's internally consistent. Give a guy credit for something. It's as bipartisan as I'm going to get tonight, but it's not nothing.