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I will say this... What bothers me about Bush, more than any one action or decision is a personality trait of his that has clearly impeded his actions and decisions. It is his inflexibility. It seems that once he gets an idea in his head (eg. "We're going to war with Saddam because he tried to kill my daddy"), there is nothing that stops him from acting on it, even if there is evidence that it is the wrong thing to do. Some people believe that it is an admirable trait (he doesn't "waffle"), but I think this is a continuum between waffling because you are just trying to please who you're talking to at the time and being so stubborn and hard headed that you won't change your mind no matter how many facts you are presented with. What I'd really like to see in a candidate is someone who has firm belief systems but will take the actual facts, process them, and act on them accordingly.
To get this back to the current election, I now dislike John McCain because I feel like he used to be in the middle of that continuum but is now completely waffling to please the most conservative in the right wing. I am not convinced that Hillary Clinton is flexible enough, although I believe Bill was (example: welfare reform, typically not something a Democrat would do but he saw that there had to be a compromise because it was out of control). As for Obama, I don't feel like I know enough about him to determine it because he hasn't been in the spotlight long enough to tell. I get a distinct impression from Huckabee that he leans toward the inflexible range. I didn't even rip on Bush #1 for the "no new taxes" thing. To me, that was an example of "I really didn't want to have to, but when the facts presented themselves, I realized we had to make a change". I admire that.
If I used the measure of "Who can I stand to see on TV constantly for the next 4 years", it's Obama. That's a pretty shallow measure, but the man is a great orator. That was a very successful trait for both Reagan and Bill.
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