[Chancellor]

Quote by: Sonart . I seem to recall another well known ocassion when a candidate teared up in New Hampshire.. and it cost him the election. Edmund Muskee.

That was an entirely different era.

Surely a candidate as politically astute as Clinton would avoid that, right? These candidates have been going at it longer than any Presidential campaign in history.

See above.

There's all kinds of political parties in America, Jubloz. But since the Democrats and Republicans represent pretty much the American political mainstream, that means the others represent the political fringes.

Political parties become viable when people vote for them and there are a lot more people with ideas that are on the "political fringes" than we might think.

Which means you can either vote for a radical fruitcake, or accept the fact that the kind of person who wants to run for mainstream party political office, and is willing to endure the election process to do so, will probably not be someone you particularly like.

See above.

As a wise cohort on another board once put it, politics doesn't attract nice people... it attracts ambitious, lying scoundrels.

There is a lot of truth to this. Politicians are in the same category as used car salesmen and televangelists.

We here in America are lucky, however, in that we've evolved a Constitutional Democratic Republic that makes use of their best attributes -- drive, vision, the desire to succeed and do some good, etc. -- while putting checks and balances on their worst attributes -- greed, naked ambition, lust for power, etc.

I'm not sure I agree with such a glowing assessment.

No, it sure ain't perfect... but then, anyone here wanna claim to be perfect?.

Perfect is boring.