Politics 2000

I got the following question from one of my Facebook groups:

While doing due diligence, our researchers dug up some troubling information on our own candidate. Fortunately it didn’t come out during the campaign. But it could be helpful — especially if I ever run a primary campaign against this particular candidate in the future. Should I destroy all sensitive records after my campaign is over?

I’ll post my thoughts here instead of in the group.

Yes, I’d destroy the records. If I knew something about a candidate that needed to be divulged, I should have done so before he or she was elected. If I have sacrificed my ethics already in order to receive a paycheck, I can’t find them again once the checks stop coming. If I was going to work for a candidate, I’d have to believe in him or her. If sensitive information meant that I couldn’t do so, then I should have quit.

Sniping at someone afterward, like the John McCain operatives who have anonymously done so to Sarah Palin, is petty and childish. It’s a bad reflection on everyone involved. I hope I would not do the same were I ever in their shoes.

Rumors abound tonight that Barack Obama will appoint Hillary Clinton Secretary of State Monday. Then again, we’ve been hearing the same “reports from sources close to the situation” for three weeks. At this point, the trial balloon has been floated. Public opinion has been gathered. Either Clinton is Obama’s choice or she’s not.

Unless Obama’s transition team thought leaking was a good idea, the president-elect can’t be happy about the way the news has reached the public. For two years, Obama’s campaign was exceptionally tight-lipped. Almost no leaks occurred.

Dick Morris, Bill Clinton’s former adviser, is convinced Hillary Clinton’s camp is leaking. That way, Obama will be forced to make an appointment he doesn’t really want to make or else further alienate Hillary’s wing of the Democratic Party. If Morris is right, letting Clinton stay in the Senate and making amends to her supporters in some other way seems like the best idea.

Obama needs experience at the State Department since he has little. However, Clinton has little foreign policy experience also. Surely another post can be found for the New York senator if she insists upon joining the new administration.

Following a shortened trading session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard and Poor’s 500 each rose for the fifth consecutive day. November was still a down month for U.S. stocks but some solace could be taken.

I’ve read a few articles in recent days that concern me. One is about Colorado farmers who had a bumper harvest. They decided to open the leftovers on their 600-acre farm to the community last weekend. They expected a few thousand to come. Instead, 40,000 people picked the farm clean. So much so that the scheduled second day was canceled. The gesture was great but it’s sad that so many people needed to come to a farm and look for spare vegetables.

The second was about a Denver-area women who, lonely because her kids will spend Thanksgiving with their dad, posted an ad on Craig’s List inviting locals to enjoy the holiday with her boyfriend and her. Instead of the expected handful of emails, she received 32 requests. Not knowing how to choose, she had all respondents come. Again, congratulations on the gesture. As you’ll read in the linked article, the day went well. Nonetheless, if having Thanksgiving dinner with someone you met via Craig’s List is your best option, something’s wrong.

Finally, perhaps you’ve returned from your sojourn to the local mall for Black Friday. Stores get into the black in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, headlined by the day after Thanksgiving. All estimates say retailers will suffer this year. The question is how much. A Wal-Mart in Long Island, New York suffered tragically as a temporary employee died after being trampled this morning. Authorities aren’t sure if he died as a results of injures or if there was some other cause of death. However, the thought that people are desperate enough for a bargain on holiday presents that they’ll run over others is sobering.

Sure, these three incidents are anecdotal. I think they represent a larger trend of distress though. I find it impossible to believe that no one else in America is struggling.