I watched the last 90 minutes or more of the Republican debate tonight. Who impressed me as I watched? It was not exactly the ones I thought would impress me. My top three were John Kasich of Ohio, Jeb Bush of Florida and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. They were running on solid records as governors. They measured their words well, a trait I believe speaks for the wisdom, maturity and self-awareness of a candidate. Each handled a challenging question very well. My least favorite was Trump. He is full of himself and of empty rhetoric. He has no experience in government and said nothing of substance that I heard. Frankly, he could not be trusted. I could not give Rand Paul a chance because I have been familiar with his positions and he is way too libertarian for me, even though I thought he debated well. Ben Carson is a delightful person who seemed out of his element, he should be running for Surgeon General. He’s probably running for VP, but he would make a weak campaigner. Huckabee is probably the best public speaker in the bunch but his rhetoric is divisive. Both he and Cruz seem to harbor plenty of political rancor. Rubio said some divisive things too. He is still young. One wonders if he is running for a VP spot. Christie I dismissed because of the news out of New Jersey while he has been governor.
The danger in this campaign is that the conservative base is very angry at the state of the country. Candidates like Trump, Huckabee and Cruz are great at tapping into that ground swell of anger in the Republican conservative base. Voters in general vote their impressions and their feelings rather than looking for a strong leadership record. Today we tend to like brash, flash and attitude. But none of these make a good president. I pray that voters will have enough maturity this time to look past impressions and rhetoric and look for solid positions and elect people with wisdom, steadiness, and good character, people like John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.
You don’t mention Jindal, how do you feel about him? And I wonder how you feel about Common Core as described by Bush?
I did not get to watch the early debate. So I am not sufficiently familiar with Jindal to venture an opinion.
On your second question. I did not hear Bush’s specific comment on Common Core. However, I am suspicious of Common Core because of the increased testing and the control of the teachers’ agendas. The narrow tests results-driven focus limits their ability to be creative and to respond to individual needs. But my contacts with teachers such as my sister tell me that Common Core has some good features. The bigger problem may lie in who is running the show. In education today the teachers themselves are not given sufficient say at higher levels. A CT teacher my wife recently talked to spoke of a situation where the local administrator was a businessman with no teaching experience whatsoever. How can that work long term? Then state and national politicians start telling them what to do. Is it any wonder schools are having problems?