In what has to be the most toxically partisan political campaign of the last few decades, we finally found some cross-partisan agreement in the First Congressional District debate that TV6 aired earlier this week.
The unifying issue, interestingly enough, was the war in Afghanistan. Six candidates–Republican Dan Benishek, Democrat Gary McDowell, Libertarian Keith Shelton, US Taxpayers candidate Patrick Lambert, Green Party candidate Ellis Boal, and independent Glenn Wilson–all essentially said that the US should not be in Afghanistan.
To be fair, Benishek qualified his response by saying that we should not send American troops to fight in undeclared wars, and he clearly seemed to regard Afghanistan as an undeclared war.
Not only that, but all the candidates seemed to have similar doubts about the wisdom of the Iraq war.
So there we had it: a consensus from the far right to the far left that the two wars were a bad idea. It’s remarkable, really, when you consider that most of us long ago signed off on to these wars to one degree or another.
And even more remarkable is that we are still actively fighting the war in Afghanistan, and we still have troops in Iraq. It makes you wonder whether the President and Congress are in touch with what people are thinking outside of Washington DC.
Clearly, on this issue at least, our political leaders are not in touch with the Upper Peninsula.