Are the Presidential Candidates All Inept?

Lou Dobbs in an article on CNN.com complains about the field of candidates for president. He states that none of them are up to the task. To illustrate, he points out that no candidate has anything more than a centrist solution for Iraq (wanting to bring the troops home, but at the same time wanting to get the job done); none of them have more than a centrist position on immigration; and none of them have more than stereotypical partisan solutions for the economy. He further complains that Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton have gotten into the mire by arguing about racial and gender politics.

While this is certainly not the strongest field of candidates in recent history, it is much too early for Dobbs to be calling the next president inept. He implies that they are all as inept as George W. Bush. That will be a tough standard to meet.

The fact is that the majority of the voting population is centrist. While the extremists in both parties may have drastic solutions to the important problems identified, the majority of the voters want a more reasonable, practical approach to solving the problems that face our country.

Obviously the voters want solutions that will work, but simply throwing out extreme and inventive solutions does not guarantee they will work. The surge in Iraq, interestingly, has appeared to make a difference. There really is no drastic reason to pull everyone out, or call in the entire military just as part of a proposed solution. There is no consensus among politicians or the American public in regard to the immigration issue. There is simply no guaranteed solution to propose. Mr. Dobbs himself can't propose concrete solutions, only suggestions as to what might work. No one knows whether they will or won't work until they are tried.