On why it's rediculous to argue that the next Dem candidate need be a governor

1. The argument that governors always win is absurd and based on a nonexistent sample size. Does anyone remember the Dukakis campaign? Anyone? Any lame candidate with no speaking skills, whether his name is Kerry, Dukakis, Gore or Mondale, will lose. That's all there is to it. Even if this argument were to hold water, I would argue that former secretaries of the treasury are TOTALLY undefeated in presidential campaigns. Therefore, I propose that Robert Rubin should be the next Democratic nominee for presidnet. What? but former sec of the treasurary never lose. We can't trust those governors and their 6/10 chances!

2. As an aside to point 1., disqualifying candidates because of anything biographical is completely stupid, and invariably will make us overlook incredibly good candidates for the sake of living up to meeting our orginal dumbass characteristics. If you like your candidate, fine, but argue for your candidate, not the job profile that will most likely get him or her elected. The focus should be finding someone with an intelligent, fluent, but not superior, speaking style; the focus should be on finding someone with a record that shows that they can govern effectively when elected; the focus should not be on finding someone who has the PERFECT resume.

3. It's pretty nutty to argue that having a clear voting record is a weakness. It should be a good thing that one can look up a candidates stances on things, and their past behavior. If Gore 2000 had attacked Bush for having no clear record, and the fact that his campaign was based on gobbeltygook, then I don't think the Florida disaster would have even been an issue. If Kerry had simply stood up for his record rather than talking around it, he would have made a much better run at Florida and Ohio. Perhaps the goal should be to nominate someone with a clear record, rather than some loser with no record.

4. Governors have tended to be the second shittiest category of president (right after generals--I almost cry when I think about what this country would have been like if we had 8 years of Adlai Stevenson, rather than 8 years of fucking Ike). They have no idea about running a foreign policy, they are awful at communicating with congress (c.f, how bush can't get anything passed in a Republican controlled congress), they alienate the bureaucracy by bringing in all these inefficient dingbats from their state, and they have tended to have extremely unfocused legislative agendas. Reagan may be an exception to this, but he had tendencdies in all of these direction, and he is the one that began the Republican policy of intergenerational warfare, so fuck him.

In summary, I think that the opinion that candidates must be governors is stupid and wrongheaded, and I hate even more that people are using that and a divorce to discount Russ Feingold as a candidate, despite him being among the better guys out there.