{"id":1700,"date":"2008-03-10T21:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-11T01:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2008-03-10T21:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-11T01:06:00","slug":"the-audacity-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/?p=1700","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve<\/span> been meaning to post something on this for some time now but got tied up in the Alberta election and the 20,000 ALLEGED \u201cgates\u201d that have hit the Harper government. I\u2019ve<\/span> been drifting towards one of the horses in the US Presidential race for a while and I made it \u201cofficial\u201d a few weeks ago by adding the supporter button on my facebook<\/span> page. I don\u2019t want to call it an endorsement because:<\/p>\n

a) I reserve the right to flip flop faster than John Kerry on this one
b) I\u2019m not voting in the race and not an American
c) I\u2019m neither an expert who has followed this closely nor a vacuous celebrity
d) I\u2019ll leave it to Ian Brodie to try and influence this race<\/p>\n

All this is, is me saying who I\u2019d vote for if I lived in the States (or Guam<\/a>!).<\/p>\n

I was a big Gore supporter from the start and, once he decided not to run, I\u2019ve<\/span> been bouncing around from candidate to candidate \u2013 from Edwards to Clinton to Richardson to Obama<\/span> to Clinton to Obama<\/span> to Clin<\/span>…there may have even been a few hours when I was eagerly anticipating the Vilsackian<\/span> era, although I was probably drunk at the time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve<\/span> tried looking at the policies but, after eight years of George Bush, the Democrats are all looking pretty good and, par consequence, pretty similar. I think Hillary\u2019s plan for universal health care would be a huge leap forward in the right direction. Richardson had the best resume. I admired John Edwards trying to make poverty an issue. And I think Obama<\/span> is the best suited to end the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n

But, at the end of the day, I\u2019ll be honest \u2013 I\u2019ve<\/span> pretty much chucked policy to the wind. I\u2019m not sure I particularly care which President would be best for Canada or even who would make the best President. So long as they don\u2019t pronounce it nu-cu-lar<\/span>, or go Alan Alda<\/span> (Canadian Bacon Alan Alda<\/span> that is \u2013 I\u2019m down with West Wing Alan Alda<\/span> as the President) on our ass, I\u2019m cool.<\/p>\n

Really, it came down to one thing. Looking at the world wide political stage \u2013 especially the Canadian political stage \u2013 there are so few politicians who can actually inspire. I mean, seriously, look at what we have right now coast-to-coast \u2013 it\u2019s depressing. Even people who I like, from Dion to McGuinty<\/span>, just aren<\/span>\u2019t capable of that. Back in Alberta, only 4 in 10 eligible voters bothered to cast their ballots because they were so disenchanted with their options. So the fact that Barack<\/span> Obama<\/span> has been able to inspire millions of people and engage them in the political process just says a lot about the man. Maybe he won\u2019t change politics, but the mere fact that he could<\/em>, to me, means it\u2019s worth taking that chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been meaning to post something on this for some time now but got tied up in the Alberta election and the 20,000 ALLEGED \u201cgates\u201d that have hit the Harper government. I\u2019ve been drifting towards one of the horses in the US Presidential race for a while and I made it \u201cofficial\u201d a few weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.calgarygrit.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}