The goo-goos are usually right: It's better to split your ticket, voting for the best candidate of either party.
This approach potentially improves the average quality of our public servants. It also gives us a stronger two-party system, which dampens corruption and offers the possibility of more responsive government.
This year, however, the good-government crowd is wrong. Except for judges, you should vote a straight Republican ticket. Here's why:
AT SUNRISE today, the race for electoral votes has tightened by one important measure, leaving Romney only 13 shy of potential victory. Details at "Following the Polls."
Take David Bradley, Houston native and disgraced tough-on-crime district attorney of Williamson County. (Lisa Falkenberg, "Has disgraced ex-DA really learned his lesson?" Houston Chronicle, October 25, 2012)
That was the pull quote from Paul Ryan's address of October 25 at Cleveland State University, perhaps the finest speech by any candidate in this campaign.
If you're genuinely undecided about how to vote -- and even if you're not -- you will do yourself a favor by listening.
I am struck that while the president talks about rich people, Romney and Ryan speak about poor people. And while the president delivers snippy one-liners about aircraft carriers and submarines, Romney and Ryan speak about peace.
Here are a few snips from the Ryan speech:
We are here . . . on behalf of the idea that no matter who your parents are, no matter where you come from, you should have the opportunity in America to rise, to escape from poverty, and to achieve whatever your God-given talents and hard work enable you to achieve.
. . . .
With a few exceptions, government's approach has been to spend lots of money on centralized, bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs. The mindset behind this approach is that a nation should measure compassion by the size of the federal government and how much it spends. The problem is, starting in the 1960s, this top-down approach created and perpetuated a debilitating culture of dependency, wrecking families and communities.
. . . .
In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. We deserve better. We deserve a clear choice for a brighter future. So what is the alternative approach to Mitt Romney and I are offering?
. . . .
The short of it is that there has to be a balance -- allowing government to act for the common good, while leaving private groups free to do they work that only they can do. There's a vast middle ground between the government and the individual. Our families and our neighborhoods, the groups we join and our places of worship. This is where we live our lives. They shape our character, give our lives direction and help make us a self-governing people.
. . . .
So what is government's duty when it comes to the institutions of civil society? Basically, it is to secure their rights, respect their purposes, and preserve their freedom.
. . . .
But it's not just the abuses of government that undermine civil society: It's also the excesses of government. Look at the road we're on, with trillion-dollar deficits every year. Debt on this scale is destructive in so many ways, and one of them is that it crowds out civil society by drawing resources away from private giving.
Even worse is the prospect of a debt crisis, which will come unless we do something very soon. When government's own finances collapse, society's most vulnerable are the first victims, as we are seeing right now in the troubled welfare states of Europe. . . .
. . . .
Wherever we are in life, whether we are rich or poor, black, brown, or white, Americans by chance or by choice, we are one nation, rising or falling together. That is the promise of America, and we can make it real in the lives of the many who feel left out. To all of those Americans, I ask you to support our campaign, because our cause is yours, and yours is ours, and together we can achieve great things.
. . . lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to win independence for our blessed nation. To help protect their beautiful handiwork from the fundamental transformation our miserable president has undertaken, we can at least . . .
