I am not undecided. I know who I believe should be president. Because my reasons for selecting one candidate over the other are not based on factors related to the mining industry, I do not endorse one or the other. Although I have a biased opinion on Palin.
I have written before in this blog that I believe that mining will not be significantly affected by whether McCain or Obama is the next president. That comment brought me e-mails from people saying that Obama would promote the cause of mining union workers and that would be bad for mining—or good for mining depending on your attitude to unions. But I suspect unions are pretty much able to take care of themselves—and they should take care of themselves and their members—so they do not depend too much on the success or failure of either candidate.
I got e-mails telling me the candidates support mountaintop mining or reject it depending on how you interpret vague statements. Personally I suspect neither will move against mountaintop miners as both need coal as an integral part of any sane energy policy.
McCain seems more supportive of more nuclear power plants. But considering that the United States is already the largest generator of nuclear power and there is lots and lots of uranium in Canada and Australia, I cannot see that a few more small uranium mines in Colorado one way or the other would make much difference to the overall mining story in the USA.
Then there are the arguments that one or other of the candidates would be able to get the economy going again. I confess I have seen nothing from either candidate to inspire me with confidence that either will be able, single-handedly, to get the economy moving again, net alone make China a vast buyer of mined-materials. So forget that distinction/criterion.
There is one small consideration re Palin. I am not sure that it would be a good thing to take her out of Alaska right now. She would be good for mining in Alaska if she continues on as governor. In Washington she may be too distracted by international events to support the Alaskan mining industry. But it seems sort of churlish to deny her the vice-president’s position just because I think it would benefit Alaskan mining if she staid in Juneau.
I confess I cannot warm to Joe Biden. I mean how can you admire a guy who plagiarizes somebody else’s speech? Granted that is a long time ago, but I have to generate something new on this blog and would soon be castigated if I plagiarized.
Point is that there is one primary criterion to select one candidate over another. And that criterion is who they would put on the Supreme Court. They differ immensely in the type of person they believe would be good on the Supreme Court. They have totally different judicial philosophies. So I voted on the basis that my children and grandchildren’s lives may be significantly affected by who gets the top slots in the Supreme Court. Thus my gift to them is to vote my conscience re promises of Scalias versus Kennedys versus Ginsbergs. Incidentally my daughter told me this weekend that she is pregnant, and this will be number seven or ten depending how you count grandchildren by marriage, so this is not a trivial vote.
