Editor:
In the midst of all the proliferating arguments over which candidate most closely represents the true philosophy of his or her party, the one aspect that should not be forgotten is this:
No matter how perfect their philosophical ground is politically, no matter how effective a prospective candidate may be at navigating the perilous shoals of the Washingtonian rapids, none of these attributes amount to much — unless that individual is elected.
Both parties have an abundance of intelligent, thoughtful, capable people offering themselves for nomination. The pitfall that the myriad primary voters of those two groups simply must avoid is choosing a candidate that they feel is the closest to party doctrine and, by doing so, ending up with a candidate unable to attract voters from the independent and competing party allegiances — practically guaranteeing their defeat in November.
Fortunately, each party has a candidate that can represent a sufficient amount of the members' core values without being so strident
To put it plainly: in the case of the Republicans, it's John McCain. While he certainly is conservative — an absolute requirement in the Republican Party — his integrity, his history as a war hero and former POW, and his willingness to seek reasonable compromise with the Democrats could appeal to enough non-Republicans to propel him into the White House.
The Democrats have a candidate who also possesses aspects for cross-party appeal — his extremely inclusive approach and winning way with audiences will pull in many voters not usually motivated to vote for a Democrat or who normally do not vote at all.
It will be interesting to see if the Republicans and Democrats will choose to "play to win," or whether they will resort to self-indulgent insistence on "preaching to the choir" leaving them with two candidates that will be viewed only as the "lesser of two evils" to the general populace!
MICHAEL ROWE
Farmington
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