I will be voting for...

...John McCain.

It took me a while to make up my mind. Let me tell you why/how I did.

Basically, it was a process of elimination.

Rudy Giuliani is obviously smart and competent. But he's also prickly, vain, arrogant, and condescending. Prior to 9/11, his reputation was mixed at best. His personal life has been a disaster. He has taken positions that are strongly at odds with things that I believe. The rationale for his candidacy--"I've succeeded in every job I've ever held"--doesn't make much sense when you're talking about the presidency. Giuliani clearly uses a performance management system -- he makes policy changes, and he measures the results. He stays the course or makes adjustments accordingly. But the president doesn't have the same tools that a mayor does, nor is there a particularly close connection between what a president does in Washington, D.C., and what happens in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Basically, he's relying on an inappropriate analogy to sell himself; he's not thinking big enough. Still, I do like his no-nonsense rhetoric.

Mitt Romney is, for my money, too green and too opportunistic. He's not a lifelong anything. I don't want someone like that as president. (We already had a guy like that. His name was Bill Clinton. He aged well, but he obviously wasn't ready for prime time in 1993.)

Mike Huckabee seems to be a decent, well-meaning man. But he's also much more of an old-school Southern Democrat than a contemporary conservative Republican. By this I mean that he is conservative on social issues and center-left to left on most other issues. He's somewhere between "compassionate conservatism" and plain old Democratic orthodoxy. Wherever you want to place him on that continuum, though, he's not my guy.

Fred Thompson -- I'm not sure what the rationale is for his candidacy, nor am I particularly impressed with his Senate record or his desire to take on the responsibility of the presidency. It's not easy to imagine him hanging around for eight years. It IS easy, however, to imagine him getting burned out after two or three years: "I'm sick of dealing with these clowns in Congress and all of the hacks in the media. Hell, I could be home playing with my kids, snuggling with with my wife, smoking a cigar, drinking a brandy, and counting my money."

So, that leaves us with John McCain. He's conservative on the issues that matter most to me, he's got a wealth of (non-executive) experience, he's got an acceptable (though far from ideal) temperament for the job, and he's respected by members of Congress with whom he will have to work. Compared to the alternatives, that's good enough for me.

Comments

[Thomas]

I found this post rather amusing, based on your position regarding McCain...enjoy.

http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1199296736.shtml