AZ Politics

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When did it become acceptable for candidates for public office to refuse to answer questions? Or, as is more common, to answer without responding?

When did we become so complacent that the people who want to represent us feel free to stone-wall and obfuscate their views on vital matters of public policy, their values and philosophy?

When did having well-thought-out views on difficult issues stop being the primary qualification for holding public office, replaced, by all the evidence, by the ability to talk without communicating anything?

When did public officials seize the right to make vital decisions about public affairs in private without explaining themselves to anyone?

It seems to be the rule rather than the exceptions that major candidates blow off questionnaires from public interest groups like Project Vote-Smart. That’s just a shame. I’ve frankly had enough of that non-sense. I’m just one guy with a blog, but I’m fortunate that a fairly large number of people who together can exert a lot more influence than me actually take the time to read what I have to say. What I’m saying now is that I’ve had enough.

I want some answers. Two hundred of them to be exact.

With your help, I seek to craft 20 pointed, well-framed questions on each of 10
topics. These questions will be asked of the candidates in CD 8,
incrementally, 20 at a time, until the project dies a well-deserved
death because nobody can be arsed to participate and make this
experiment work, or until all 200 questions have been fully and
responsively answered by the candidates over the course of the
campaign.

I don’t think that I am the only one who can frame a good question. Nor are good questions limited to a particular political viewpoint; just the opposite, in fact. So
I am asking for everyone’s help in creating the questions, too. That includes my bloggity pals on the red end of the spectrum.

Whether we’ll get any answers is pretty much up to you. If you want answers as much as I do, and you make just the slightest effort to ensure that adequate answers are given, then I’m confident that answers are what we’ll get. I am more than willing to share those answers with anyone and everyone in the media willing to listen. I don’t want a scoop, or exclusivity, or credit; I just want the answers.

I have created a wiki for collaborative work on this project.
Anyone can read and comment on the pages. If you want to actually edit
the wiki, you need to be added to the group by me. To be added, send me an email
expressing your interest and listing any group or groups you are
associated with that may be interested in co-sponsoring the questions.

Read more about the 200Q project and the 10 topics after the click…

Some of you may have noticed that I quietly introduced a sidebar feature "Mike’s Arizona Blog Notes". I have been reading blogs predominantly through Google’s Reader for some time now, and their ‘share’ feature is a very convenient way for me to mark posts I find interesting and informative. I read everything so that you … Read more

Jimmy Nintzel must have thought it would be a cute PR stunt for his paper that would widen voter participation and engagement with the primary election, but the Weekly’s Project Whitehouse turned out to be a big waste of time for the volunteers who performed the hand count audits of the election returns. It may … Read more

Your Democratic Election Integrity Committee is collecting Presidential Primary incident reports. Members of our committee will work through these identifying patterns to prepare for future elections. If you saw something happen be very specific in your report – who/what/when/where/how – please.  Avoid hearsay, which would cause us to waste time as we attempted to trace … Read more

When he
launched his brutal invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Saddam
Hussein shocked the world.  As his forces callously swept over the
small neighboring state, he also deliberately smashed a budding
rapprochement with the United States.  Although Saddam’s
government had been peddling regional stability as an objective, it
viciously repudiated that policy when it went to war. American
intelligence officers were stunned and mortified.  Their analyses of
Hussein’s intentions regarding Kuwait had been wrong.  No one
had seen the invasion coming – not even the Kuwaiti leaders fleeing
in terror toward the Saudi border.            

During the
early 1980s, Iraq’s emissaries to Washington began pushing to
improve relations with the United States.  They said Iraq wanted to
end the war with Iran.  In their newly found desire to promote
regional stability, the Iraqis expressed a willingness to support
whatever agreement the Israelis and Palestinians worked out.  Had the
bitter war with Iran forced Saddam Hussein to alter his policies?  An
emphasis on economic development, the calls for regional peace and
closer cooperation with the United States were taken as signs that
the government of a war-weary Iraq was bending to reality.

More of Karl’s unique first-hand perspective of the history of the Iraq conflict after the click…