A few days ago, I invited Huffington Post readers to vote for "the central madman" in the Bush administration, and by the time my blog fell off the blogroll, there were 397 responses. My first finding in this project was that counting votes is way too hard to be left to machines. My second finding is that DGOQ gets the gold star for best joke, which goes as follows:"I entered my vote on a Diebold Electronic Voting machine and look what happened: Cheney, Cheney, Cheney..." for a page and a half. To DGOQ: I hope your computer hasn't been permanently corrupted from typing "Cheney" approx. 500 times.
The responses were all interesting and frequently quite illuminating, which motivates me to pop another quiz! (more below)
But first, the statistics:
Cheney: 164
Bush: 46 1/2
Cabal: 32 1/2
Rove: 24 1/2
Project for the New American Century: 16 1/2
Barbara Bush: 11
George Herbert Walker Bush: 8
Satan: 7 1/2
American People, or "Ignorati": 7
Unindentified Background Powers: 6 1/2
Corporate Ruling Class: 5
Rumsfeld; Rightwing Sheep; Leo Strauss: 4 each
Quisling Democratic Party; Broken Down Republican Party: 3 each
Carlyle Group; Laura Bush; Wolfie, Kissinger: 2 eachNote: 1/2 votes occurred when the voter wished to split his or vote, but if the vote was split three ways or more, it went into the "cabal" category.
One vote each for: sheer momentum, the Federal Reserve, Jane Smiley, God, Harriet Miers, Benjamin Netanyahu, James A Baker III, the Pope, Rupert Murdoch, Pat Robertson, Douglas Feith, Keller and Sulzberger, Nixon, Grover Norquist (a sentimental favorite of mine), George Shultz, Sir Alex Ferguson (English football coach) and Richard Perle.
Hanging Chad got 9 votes. Hanging Chads were votes I couldn't understand.
A poster named MT voted for himself. We think MT stands for Master Teacher, a person we know who would vote for himself as the originator of this bad dream we call the world. Thank you MT for introducing a spiritual note into this post.
The numbers do not add up, but neither is this vote official. It is only fascinating.
So, of course, the next question is, if we're so smart, why aren't we in power? Don't answer that.
Answer this instead:
Now that you have picked your central madman, 1) What do you think he (or she) considers his (or her) motive to be for acting as he (or she) does? 2) What do you think is the real motive? 3) What is his (or her) ace in the hole? and 4) What is his (or her) Achilles heel?
Note to the DNC: Many of these posts are worth pondering. Please get busy!