How about President Al Gore

He seems to me to be quite an open-minded politician and the best candidate I'd like to see win the 2008 presidency. What do you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/艾伯特

it is a nice website, very informative. he is a good guy and i like him. but as i can see it, the chances that he will come back and run for the office are rather slim.

Yeah it's a pity. The defeat to Bush must have been quite a shock for him. Perhaps when effective propaganda is possible democracy is no longer a good way of selecting leaders.

oh, somehow i have a feeling that gore knew the result. the republicans were very aggressive--looked like that they were determined to win at any cost. the electorial system gave an advantage to bush, plus, of course, the decisive role played by the high court that ended a bitter division between supporters of the two candidates. bush was ugly then.

>determined to win at any cost
Unfortunatly illegitimate means also helps in gaining victory and sometimes being modest equals limiting your own choices. E.g., not taking advantage of apparently exploitable national sentiments after 9/11.

yeah, i agree. it should be something politically exploitable. i was scared after the crash of WTC in lower manhattan, in the following days. the nbc news had staying captions of big fonts "america attacked" and "america at war". the media was furious and the national sentiment was strong.

people often prefer to choose the shortest the path to conclusion, even if that path is misleading. and that's probably the root of this kind of exploits.
it's good that success reaped by such means tend to be unstustainable, as evidenced by the recent plamegate scandle. but with the mindset still largely unchanged, people are pretty likely to choose the same kind of propaganda artist again.

mmh, i am not sure i fully understand what you said. i guess people here are more concerned of their daily stuff, less about politics. yesterday night, i went to a movie theater with my wife and saw about a dozen people standing quietly on the street sides holding plates with "no bloody oil from iraq". it was the first time i met protesters for the iraq war. i heard people around complaining about the high gasoline price and supporting congress' investigations into the issue. Bush has got a big setback as his nominee for the supreme court lead judge excused herself and the aid to vice president Cheney resigned on the resurgence of an old political scandle.

It's true that most people don't care much about politics but in a democracy like the US the choice of a leader should be quite important to the majority of people.
As for gasoline, I think many people mainly use their cars to commute so there's little they can do to save, and gas is actually much cheaper in the US than in Europe because of low tax rates. Do you see a lot of people trying to save? Doesn't seem like something those card-loving nationals of the only superpower would be keen in doing. By the way Dubya's brother Jeb Bush seems to be having some problems in Florida too. What a family.
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Regarding my prior statement of "people often prefer to choose the shortest the path to conclusion", e.g. when people see an article related to a topic of their concern and think it presents the conclusion in a credible way, they accept the conclusion without asking why. And many people are actually quite used to be taught what's right and what's wrong.

i think it is reasonable to say that the gasoline purchase is a fixed expenditure for many who drive to work, or to any place. i found it quite amazing that the cars in the parking lot where i work are mostly sedans while the cars in the shopping plaza with mostly chinese stores are still half SUVs and half sedans. my goodness. just think about the $3 per gallon price tag last month!

as for the "minimum path thinking" pattern that exists as a habit in most people, i can't agree with you more. it is like what an old story tells: the noon time in an ancient city was indicated by the gun fires and the bell rings which unfortunately was a big mistake but was discovered only when the guns were out of order on one morning that the bell person ran to check with the gun person.

the audience and the media have a relationship similar to that between the gun person and the bell person in the ancient city. i don't know it is who that influeced whom and which side is at fault. anyway, for most of the time i have tried to find that minimum path to walk through. oops, i shouldn't have put myself in an awkward position like this.