Sunday, April 09, 2006

Les Roberts Has Most Foreign Policy Credibility, Readers Say

So far, the survey results here show a pretty strong pattern, and the comments only amplify that pattern.

A solid majority of readers believe that, of all the candidates running for the Democratic Party nomination in New York's 24th congressional district, Les Roberts has the most credibility on foreign policy.

* 57 percent of readers so far indicate that Les Roberts is the best choice for Congress on foreign policy issues.
* Only 33 percent of readers are willing to say the same thing about Michael Arcuri.
* Leon Koziol is even further behind, with just 10 percent of readers saying that they believe Koziol has the most credibility on foreign policy.

In the comments section, though I asked people voting to explain their votes, most did not. However, it's pretty significant that only those voting for Les Roberts as the most credible candidate on foreign policy actually left comments giving their reasons for that vote.

There is, to be fair, one cryptic comment arguing that all we need in a Congressional representative when it comes to foreign policy is "a Congressmen with an actual working brain and a bit of courage for good measure."

Should we now begin a debate on which Democratic candidate is most likely to have a working brain? Perhaps not. I think that we can all agree that the three Democratic candidates all have working brains. The question is what ends those brains are working for, and with what particular skills. Not all working brains are alike.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

My actual working brain comment was meant to contrast our need with the level of functioning currently seen in Washington. Having a president of lower caliber than Andrew Johnson AND a Congress that has to take a poll to see if they can find way to take a stand that benefits the American people has left me and a lot of others totally cynical about the caliber of people who are actually running for Congress.

Looking at the Republican side, we have the utterly incompetent Ray Meier and the nut-case right wing zealot Brad Jones.

So the question is are the Democrats producing anyone better?

Leon Koziol couldn't bother to get around to filing with the FEC until late March yet claimed to be a candidate for months before. Organizationally irresponsible.

Mike Arcuri, who could have been a credible candidate, has lost a lot of that with the idiotic support of the DCCC, who are not us, with the utterly parochial support of his home county, and with the fact he is not willing to resign and run full time for the job.

Les Roberts came in late, sorry but true since you need to plan this like Brad Jones did - a long time in the making, has not reached out effectively to enough of the organizational structure of the district committees and does not have a seasoned campaign staff.

On a policy level, Les Roberts is perhaps the best candidate. On a campaign experience level, Mike Arcuri has an edge although I'm increasingly feeling like his campaign still hasn't realized this is the big leagues and not an upstate countywide race. Leon Koziol has an edge with his Indian land claims issue because it hits home the truth that shrinking tax bases, rising tax costs, lack of economic opportunity, rising energy costs and the rest are causing massive flight from upstate and the Northeast.

But nowhere in there is a candidate who combines the intelligence and guts to say the war on terror is a partisan mistake of the millenium, that has a credible and seasoned campaign staff, and the time and personal skills to bridge the territorial interests of this cobbled together Congressional District. Unless one of them gets that message and responds to it, I'm afraid that the efforts and desires of a lot of good people in this District will be for naught.

Frankly, we deserve a lot better than we are getting. I say to the candidates, prove you are worthy of support because I don't see it yet.

Anonymous said...

It's funny how, once you start talking substance, all those Arcuri supporters and their big talk just melt away...

Anonymous said...

My God, you are shameless. Your "poll" has 21 votes and yet you make it sound like it actually matters.

You want substance on foreign policy? Les Roberts will get shredded by the Republicans. Maybe that kind of stuff passes for research in public health, but a 95 percent confidence interval of 20,000 to 180,000 is absurd. He might as well have pulled a number from his hat. Add to that the Chronicle of Higher Ed piece where he basically admits that he timed the release of the survey to influence the election. Thinking about him running in a general election is like me thinking of my grandmother playing running back in the NFL. Both would be crushed.

Roberts seems like a smart, well meaning person, but he's a lamb to the slaughter.

I'm sure you won't post this comment since you haven't posted any of my previous ones. You seem to have something against people who criticize your ridiculous polls. Oh well, I guess you need to have something to while away the hours in your mom's basement when you aren't downloading porn.

Anonymous said...

4/9 9:50 p.m.:

You just trumpet your own ignorance with comments like that. You don't understand the science of Roberts' studies; his work is rigorous and valid and confirmed as such by experts. You have a responsibility to educate yourself on this score.

Then, quite aside from the rigor, the validity, is the courage it takes to do studies like these.

You show your own limited comprehension again with your misreading of the Chronicle of Higher Ed piece. Roberts wasn't trying to influence the election, as much as he was trying to get attention focused on the fact that, quite conservatively, 100,000 Iraqis had been killed since the U.S. invasion, and killed not by disease and disruption as is usually the case in war, but by bombs and bullets. If the presidential candidates were forced to respond to all these excess deaths....what might happen?

Say what you want about it (except, in future, please do exercise a responsibility to be correct, and either educate yourself or leave what you don't understand to the experts like Roberts), but this isn't the stuff with which Republicans can shred anyone, let alone Les Roberts.

He was against the war from the beginning. He hoped that the news of at least 100,000 Iraqis killed, mostly by our bombs and bullets, would garner enough attention to influence policy on how to end the war. Read his position paper.

Les Roberts is no lamb. The Republicans have already tried to shred him on this, and have gotten nowhere. They dug and they dug and couldn't find anything to shred him with. Look what they did to Joe Wilson. I'd be more concerned, frankly, about the Republican shredding machine trained on either of the other candidates, since, as best as I can tell, neither of them have gone through it before, let alone and come out unscathed. The candidate who's already been through it is the strongest candidate. If a candidate who's never been through it were to get his first brutal experience of it in the general election, who knows what could happen? With Roberts, we've got that one covered.

Anonymous said...

"The question is what ends those brains are working for. . . ."

One for ambition, one for ideology, one for a better world. Can you guess which is which?

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, I'm not defending Mike Arcuri or supporting Roberts, but a certain amount of domestic policy "know-how" is at least what I look for in a congressman. It was left to Congress to handle the country where the President is more of a singular person to deal with foreign powers. Roberts may have been all over the world and if you read his profile you get the impression he single handedly solved Africa's problems, but, that doesn't make him the best candidate for office. I am impressed with his experience and work, don’t get me wrong, but one man cannot solve all our foreign policy problems; at least Tytler had some what of an experience building coalitions and planning budgets. I’ll never forget when Roberts justified his experience with budgets and consensus building at a New Hartford forum; he cited his wife and her work at the Sidney Library. Ok…
Also, simply because Arcuri has been the DA in a heavily Republican area means little. I get the impression that this means he will sell out to republicans to do what he needs to do to simply survive in congress. I was a little enthusiastic about Arcuri, but to find out he was just reelected as DA and is abandoning his county in their time of need to run for congress is not kosher.
I really have to say, with Robert's less than stellar domestic experience and Arcuri looking more and more like an empty suit. Where’s a Jed Bartlet, or at least Bruce Tytler when you need them? Kinda sad when I have to reach into fiction for a good leader.

Anonymous said...

Hey, better get back to school. The President is not a "singular person to deal with foreign powers". Jon didn't ask you to check the Constitution at the door when you post here.

Where did you get the idea Tytler knew anything about budgets? When he was Mayor of Cortland there was an administrator that did that.

And I never heard about Tytler building coalitions. I hear he spent his whole term as mayor fighting with the council and finally with his party chair.

Anonymous said...

Why don't we just check the constitution at the door? Everyone else seems to be- the attorney general, the supreme court, the president, and congressional leadership.

2:03 PM, April 11, 2006 may have been a little over zealous and off, when you get to be that age it tends to happen, but the bulk of the message is right. I will be voting in September and am not at all excited about either candidate.

Ok, we get the point. Les has that half of the job as congressman under raps. But that's only half of it. The other half, in my mind, is a sound knowledge of the domestic problems that have and continue to haunt this country. They're getting worse. A lot worse, and the annointed Mr. Michael Arcuri isn't convincing me, a voter for some 50 odd years, that he can have the b@lls to stand up to some pretty wacky republican reactionaries in congress, and forget about Roberts. Maybe his wife can help him out.

Anonymous said...

To be honest with you I never heard of les roberts except as a footnote in news coverage and when i started looking at these blogs. These personal blogs are the only coverage he is getting, you walk down the street randomly outside his town and ask 100 people who les roberts is and they will say they don't know. The guy wants to run against a concrete pillar of the republican party and he has not even shown he can get the votes to do that.This is not a realistic candidate. What are we trying to do here, lose again?

Anonymous said...

What concrete pillar of the Republican party? They have one incompetent idiot and one zealot.

I'll bet you mean Meier because you live in Oneida county. Nobody on the western side of this CD has ever heard of him.

Anonymous said...

Incompetent idiots and zealots ARE concret pillars of that party. As for not hearing of Arcuri, well thats a coincidence because nobody on this side of the district ever heard of Roberts either.