Today I was flipping through the channels when I came upon Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN. He was talking about Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the U.S. Senate, current U.S. Representative Kirsten Gillibrand. While I don’t have a lot of confidence in politicians in general, a glimmer of optimism hit me when Dobbs was debating why she was picked, saying she scored high ratings from both the ACLU and the NRA. Wow! My mind raced as I thought how great things might be from now on if a libertarian Democratic was appointed to the U.S. Senate instead of the ultra-liberals that could have gotten the nod.
As a pro-gun civil libertarian myself, I know what a tight rope it is to be down with both the ACLU and the NRA crowds. There are very few situations where both groups overlap, but you might be surprised. As a candidate for political office, I would probably only be able to garner an 80 to 90% rating from each group, since I don’t recite the party line upon request. I especially don’t fall in line when major philosophical consistencies occur, as both groups sometimes have happen. The ACLU folks that I’ve met are all into “group rights” as opposed to individual rights. Technically speaking, only individuals can have rights. The gun rights people I’ve met tend to hate the ACLU, in general, and specifically because they too often misinterpret the Second Amendment as applying only to soldiers. And the NRA isn’t really a no-compromise pro-gun organization anyway, unlike awesome national grassroots activist groups like Gun Owners of America or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. But most likely I wouldn’t be able to get rated or even recognized as a candidate by these groups as I’m not a Demopublican or a Republicrat. Getting rated by such groups is often dependent upon a “major” political party affiliation. Nevertheless, some bastard child of the ACLU and NRA is how I would classify myself if forced into a ten-second soundbite description.
So I pulled up Kirsten Gillibrand’s entry on Wikipedia in order to get the real story. Right away, even though she is being made out by some pundits to be a really, really junior Senator, it’s clear she has more legal and policy experience than previously mentioned candidate, Caroline Kennedy. She’s a member of the Blue Dog Democrats, which is why she’s coming off a little more conservative than Clinton ever did. She still is a bit open about social issues, but doesn’t appear overly so. She opposed the bailout, but so did a lot of people who didn’t completely understand the most pressing reason to do so. Unfortunately, she is in favor of keeping young folks locked into a struggling social security system.
All-in-all, I’m slightly optimistic. All the media coverage regarding her seat and the speculation if she will be the next Hillary Clinton will make her career easy to follow. She better do some good, since we’ll all be watching.
Entries (RSS)