Stupid takes a step towards the White House.

[Warren Dew]

God help us all...oh wait - that won' work will it...

Michelle Bachmann wins something or other. Here:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14519660

While I, too, until recently bought into the liberal press assumption that anyone who was both female and Republican must be a Palin clone, after watching Thursday's debate I no longer think this is the case. Michele Bachmann is a very smart cookie who can think on her feet and is several steps ahead of the journalists.

Now, it is true that she's refraining from correcting press misconceptions that help her in the Republican primaries, such as the lack of differentiation between intelligent design and young earth creationism, or failure to identify that she was head of the house Tea Party caucus which was so instrumental in shaping the bill to increase the debt limit. That doesn't mean she's dumb; it means she's a good politician as well as being smart.

This isn't to say I agree with all her positions, but don't assume that just because she's a woman, she must not be very smart. If you want to have an informed opinion, watch the debate or read the transcript yourself:

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/08/12/io ... ull-video/

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washing ... -cain.html

[Ian]

I've been paying attention to her career for five years now. I for one have few problems with her intelligence and ability to think on her feet. I have major problems with her politics, as do most voters. She would be annihilated like a racoon on the I-95 in the general election.

Alas, the Democrats have not been good enough for the political gods to grace them with a Bachmann candidacy. It'll be Romney or Perry, I think.

[Feck]

[hadespussercats]

Think! the first US woman President ... the women of America should stand together and vote Palin Bachman !

I'd like to hope the women of America are smart enough to vote for someone who represents their best interests, regardless of sex.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I've been paying attention to her career for five years now. I for one have few problems with her intelligence and ability to think on her feet. I have major problems with her politics, as do most voters. She would be annihilated like a racoon on the I-95 in the general election.

Alas, the Democrats have not been good enough for the political gods to grace them with a Bachmann candidacy. It'll be Romney or Perry, I think.

Fact Sheet: Gov. Rick Perry’s Extremist Allies

[Warren Dew]

Interesting. She's against gay marriage but she doesn't rule out appointing an openly gay judge to the federal bench. That sounds like a much more centrist view than her media portrayal to date, even if it doesn't match my own.

[apophenia]

Is it a sort of vicarious thrill, you think? Like, "Hey, s/he isn't that different from me-- which means I could be president, if I really wanted it..."

Never stopping to think "Fuck! I'm not really qualified to deal with that job at all!"

...I'd love to be absolutely outclassed in every respect by a presidential candidate-- someone smarter, more insightful, more educated on a wider variety of subjects, funnier, better-looking, more athletic, you name it.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to vote for a real hero? Why wouldn't you want your leader to be better than you?

That would go against the "folksy" principle. We'd love it, but we're not folksy. Voters in GOP primaries, especially places like Iowa, are all about the plain-spoken candidates who can hang out at the state fair.

I'm reminded of a statement about leadership, that a leader must be ahead of the people, in that he must lead them "to" someplace, but a leader must also follow those they lead in as much as they must be in touch with, and respond to, where the people are willing to go; to follow Ian's text, a leader who is too far ahead of the curve is just as bad as one who doesn't in fact lead, but rather simply reflects what the people seem to want to hear -- a perfect representative of the status quo.

I'm also reminded of Francis Galton's experiments on the wisdom of the crowd. Galton, from what I'm told, was something of an elitest. Yet he conducted an experiment, where a crowd of people were asked to weigh in on some question (say, the weight of a pig). He found that while the individual answers ranged widely, the average of all the "guesses" yielded an answer that was very close to true. Perhaps the crowd is weighing in on the centrist position implicitly because that is where the answer likely lies.

Now, I don't believe any of the above nonsense, but it makes entertaining reading. I'm a little more cynical than that. Because of kinship selection effects, which themselves are likely determined by our reproductive strategy (K-selection, few offspring, rather than r-selection, many offspring [e.g. bacteria]) and the viscosity of our populations (groups of people tend to do relatively small amounts of moving around -- if your neighbors move to a different continent every 2-3 days, your relationships and investment in them would be grossly altered), certain norms of behavior emerge in our conscious values. We care more about those who are like us, than those who are different; if we judge them too different, we may want them to be "cut off" from our tribe altogether. This makes both genetic sense, and it operates similarly in the memetosphere -- those who are most like us are most likely to value what we value and further those ends. In both senses, electing someone that is like you makes sense -- biologically, our brains are evolved to increase our anxiety the further we stray from our "in-group", and as a matter of course, we expect those who are like us -- not necessarily in a relevant way -- to share the same values and opinions we have. It's why "elitist" has become a derogatory term and not one of approbation. We've come a long way from Plato's philosopher-kings and golden lies. The future is a populist future.

[apophenia]

Neither Bachmann, nor Palin would stand a chance in a general election.

Palin and Bachmann

..for President and Vice President!

Bring back the Tetrarchy!

Four caesars who rule co-equally -- a republican and a democratic for the North, and a pair for the South.

Long live the Pax Romana!

"What's this then? 'ROMANES EUNT DOMUS.' People called Romanes, they go the house?"

[apophenia]

I think the teapartiers will have their fun, with Bachman or Mr Texas, but Mitt R. is going to have to decide what to do with them when he gets the nomination. The closest they got to a man in the white house, or will, is the founder of antigovernment in modern times, Reagan.

Reagan , often credited with being the forbear of the Tea partry, who paradoxically increased government expenditure by leaps and bounds.

I wholeheartedly support that. I'm all forbears. And the right to arm bears. I'm for that, too.

[Feck]

I think the teapartiers will have their fun, with Bachman or Mr Texas, but Mitt R. is going to have to decide what to do with them when he gets the nomination. The closest they got to a man in the white house, or will, is the founder of antigovernment in modern times, Reagan.

Reagan , often credited with being the forbear of the Tea partry, who paradoxically increased government expenditure by leaps and bounds.

I wholeheartedly support that. I'm all forbears. And the right to arm bears. I'm for that, too.

I have the T-shirt

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Neither Bachmann, nor Palin would stand a chance in a general election.

Palin and Bachmann

..for President and Vice President!

Bring back the Tetrarchy!

Four caesars who rule co-equally -- a republican and a democratic for the North, and a pair for the South.

Long live the Pax Romana!

"What's this then? 'ROMANES EUNT DOMUS.' People called Romanes, they go the house?"

Err... wasn't it the triumvirate? 3 emperors? So that would be 1 democrat, 1 republican and... Ross Perot?

[apophenia]

Bring back the Tetrarchy!

Four caesars who rule co-equally -- a republican and a democratic for the North, and a pair for the South.

Long live the Pax Romana!

Err... wasn't it the triumvirate? 3 emperors? So that would be 1 democrat, 1 republican and... Ross Perot?

Wikipedia: Tetrarchy

One of the greatest problems facing emperors in the Third Century Crisis was that they were only ever able to personally command troops on one front at any one time. While Aurelian and Probus were prepared to accompany their armies thousands of miles between war regions, this was not an ideal solution. Furthermore, it was risky for an emperor to delegate power in his absence to a subordinate general, who might win a victory and then be proclaimed as a rival emperor himself by his troops (which often happened). All members of the imperial college, on the other hand, were of essentially equal rank, despite two being senior emperors and two being junior; their functions and authorities were also equal.

Under the Tetrarchy a number of important military victories were secured. Both the Dyarchic and the Tetrarchic system ensured that an emperor was nearby to every crisis area to personally direct and remain in control of campaigns simultaneously on more than just one front. After suffering a defeat by the Persians in 296, Galerius crushed Narseh in 298 — reversing a series of Roman defeats throughout the century — capturing members of the imperial household and a substantial amount of booty and gaining a highly favourable peace treaty, which secured peace between the two powers for a generation. Similarly, Constantius defeated the British usurper Allectus, Maximian pacified the Gauls, and Diocletian crushed the revolt of Domitianus in Egypt.

A vivid picture of the Tetrarchy in action showing both its strengths and weaknesses is the rise to power of Constantine the Great, whose story -- aside from the almost incidental positioning of him as the legitimizer of the Christian religion -- is a tale of a remarkable individual. Summations do not do the man justice. To understand Constantine, you have to read his history.

Constantine the Great (272-337)

[charlou]

Wouldn't it be great to be able to vote for a real hero? Why wouldn't you want your leader to be better than you?

I have to say, I've never thought of the president as my leader, except when I was in the military.

I think of voting as more like selecting an employee.

Would that everyone, including the candidates, had that attitude.

[Atheist-Lite]

America will get the 'leader' it deserves. I suspect some unknown coming from nowhere. A real wildcard, necessary to distract the American public from their real rulers.

[Gallstones]

The future is a populist future.

Maybe it always is.