On the matter of "defending" candidates

The other day I asked a question about ANWR that was specifically directed to my portsider friends. Since my portsider friends are smart people, I received some thoughtful responses. In the comments section of that post I had a genial exchange with my friend Rich, who is a regular and greatly appreciated visitor to this feature. He praised me for being honest in expressing my view that drilling in ANWR isn't about energy independence. That was nice of Rich to say. Then Rich said something that I thought was interesting:

Second count is for not defending McCain's proposal to suspend the Fed Gas tax. . . .

One of the dynamics of the blogosphere, it seems to me, is that we spend way too much time asking people to defend the views of others. While I don't think Rich was necessarily expecting me to defend McCain's proposal, I sense Rich was surprised that I didn't.

We'd probably be a lot better off if we stopped asking people to "defend" our politicians, especially when they say and do things that aren't reasonably defensible. Many Obama supporters have had a hell of a bad time lately as their guy has stumbled through the minefields of race and class, all while battling the insatiable 24-hour news cycle.

It's frankly a lot easier being a McCain supporter. Many of us who support his candidacy aren't necessarily that fond of him, which I wrote about back in February. When McCain proposes something that would be ineffectual (like suspending the gas tax) or says something that is demonstrably wrong (like blaming the 35W bridge collapse on pork-barrel spending), I feel no reason to defend him. McCain has my support and will likely get my vote in November because he's the best available alternative. My guess is that Rich supports Obama because, in his judgment, Obama is the best available alternative. If nothing else, no matter who emerges from this God-awful scrum of an election cycle, we shouldn't have any illusions about the next President of the United States, because by now they've all received the gimlet eye.