Political Thoughts (from the Last Election)

In 2012, I was very concerned about the presidential campaign and about issues that seemed important at the time. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to be blogging about  every day’s political news. Therefore, in September 2012, I wrote, in a post titled “A Preëmptive Political Post,”

To save myself from all that future writing, I’ve decided to develop a kind of preëmptive post simply listing themes relevant (or maybe relevant) to the presidential campaign. Each of these themes could be expanded into a standalone essay, but I leave that, at least for now, to the imagination of the reader. Other bloggers are free to write their own essays on these themes. Who knows, I might even do that myself if I get really fired up. More likely, though, I will save my efforts for campaign issues we haven’t even heard about yet.

The post, which is little more than a list of political beliefs, has attracted more visitors than anything else I have written here. No one has ever left a comment on the essay, though, and I suspect that few visitors have ever became readers. Instead, I think I created perfect click bait, a post that includes so many politically relevant words that Google often presents it as a relevant search result.

I reread my 2012 post today and was struck that most of what I wrote is still relevant, and I have no reason to repudiate anything I wrote during the last presidential election. (This is something of a depressing thought.) To the degree that anything on my list seems less relevant now than then, it at least has some value as nostalgia.

I invite (real) readers to have a look at “A Preëmptive Political Post.” I do have one additional item to add that has special relevance to the 2016 presidential campaign. I do this just before Iowans go to their caucuses:

Lack of political experience is not a qualification for high political office.