Algorithm Names Powell 'Ideal' Vice President Candidate

CWmike writes "Turns out the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama, according to a sophisticated online survey based on technology developed at MIT. Mr. Ideal? Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state. Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities. Affinnova calls this algorithm 'evolutionary optimization.' Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"

Comments

Meet the new boss...

[sohp]

.. same as the old boss.

'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'

What? The Demopublicans and the Republicrats are all the same? That unpossible!

Re:Meet the new boss...

[mOdQuArK!]

Oh yes, let's blame the Democrats. They are in a situation which is unwinnable.

I'm really tired of that argument. The Republicans rammed their agenda down the Democrats' throats when the Republicans had a small majority. Given how hated the Republican Party is right now, the Democrats could easily crush Republican resistance if they did pulled all the parliamentary dirty tricks that the Republicans were famous for, if the Democrats did their PR right and IF THEY HAD THE COURAGE, but they keep rolling over EVERY G*D*MN time the neo-con attack machine barks.

The Democrats are completely in charge of setting the Congressional agenda. They don't have to propose anything they don't want to, and there's nothing the Republicans can do about that. They could shut Republicans out of making any sort of legislation at all, and there's nothing the Republicans could do about that. The Democrats could refuse to allocate any money at all for Republican pet projects, and there's nothing the Republicans could do about that. They can make the Republicans do song-and-dance routines on the Senate floor to keep a filibuster going, and there's nothing the Republicans could do about that. The Democrats could do public investigations on all of the most-corrupt neo-con leader finances, and there's nothing the Republicans could do about it. But the Democrats KEEP ROLLING OVER.

The Democratic leadership MOST DEFINITELY bears a huge responsibility for continuing the status quo, as does people like you who keep making excuses for them.

Also, the Democrats have to vote for more war spending because if they don't they are sacrificing our military, and that doesn't go over well with any voter, whether you're blue state or red state.

You do remember how the Vietnam War was ended, right? Congress refused to allocate any more funding for it - and suddenly, it was over.

We can either end it now, bring everyone home, and try to use what resources we have left to lick our wounds & repair our crumbling infrastructure, or we can wait until we have NO RESOURCES left, and then they'll have to come home anyway, back to a collapsing economy where it's hard to find a job, and we're hated by the world even more then we are now - especially if we attack Iran!

The _only_ reason Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld haven't been perp-walked by now is because the Democratic leadership doesn't have the courage to do what is necessary to crush the neo-con leadership & restore the Rule of Law to this country.

Flawed candidate

[Raul654]

Colin Powell was the face of the deception campaign the Bush administration orchestrated. He was the one who went to the United Nations, and made a whole bunch of claims that turned out to be false. He's damaged goods. Why on earth would someone suggest he'd be a good candidate in a year when the electorate is itching to repudiate everything about this war?

Empty Slate is liked by all!

[im_thatoneguy]

Shock and Amaze! A politician who has made almost no memorable positions known on any domestic policy beyond truism of cooperation is liked by everybody!

Of course he's a top pick by everybody--he's like Opera-- nobody knows what his actual beliefs and agenda is, therefore nobody disagrees with him. If Colin Powell were so audacious as to actually make his position known on a politically hot subject he would suddenly see his popularity plummet.

This is America. If you agree with me you're a good guy. If you don't, you're a muslim terrorist. The only way to be liked by everybody is to say nothing of consequence.

Who does age matter to?

[swb]

I keep hearing "McCain is too old" and then read other age-relative statements about VP selection and wonder who age really matters to. Yes, at the extreme, I worry about the ages of the candidates but only to the extent that it is extreme and has other impacts (eg, health or lack of experience).

But are there people out there who are like "Gee, he's too old" even when the candidate's age has no bona fide health impact? Do the same people think "Gee, he's too young" about someone younger? Obviously there's no health issue, but experience could matter a lot.

I don't think of age outside of physical health, but I worry from the way the media portrays McCain's age that we're falling a little victim to the cult of youth.

 

Re:Who does age matter to?

[Devout_IPUite]

As people age they're more likely to suffer health problems. Older people are significantly more likely to die or become incapacitated due to health. There's a certain amount of unrest with people at the idea of the president becoming incapacitated.

But what's this "cult of youth" and where can I join one? Does the YMCA host a local chapter?

Re:Who does age matter to?

[treeves]

Wheelchair-using != incapacitated. And get some cough drops.

Re:Makes sense...

[pluther]

Call me an elitist jerk all you want, but I think you should have to be a property owner to vote. Not physical property, but some kind of net worth. I don't even pretend to be able to create such a system, but you should have something invested in the government before you are able to decide what is best for "everyone".

Including what is "best" for non-property-owners?

Re:Seriously?

[trolltalk.com]

As VP Colin would be in a much better position to be heard than in his previous positions where he was basically told to make things look good, which he did well enough, IMHO.

Not to the rest of the world, he didn't. Everyone outside the US knew his presentation in the UN was a sham for the US public, and not for the world, since the rest of the world got to see the TV reports (funny how the US stations didn't carry them, hmmm ...) debunking his "findings" before he even presented them.

More like "Semi-Colin Powell" or "Up Your Colin Powell", since he's at best, a half-measure, and at worse, helped give everyone the shaft by presenting known lies as truth.

The Race Card. Re:Who does age matter to?

[Forge]

Not only am I playing the Race Card. I'm dealing it from the bottom of the deck :).

At the end of Gulf Wars episode one, a lot of Americans were suggesting Colin Powell for president. Then I went online and checked around. Turns out that most of them did not even know he was black.

I don't know what is going the rounds in America but where I live (a Caribbean country where over 90% of the population is at least part black). The popular fear is that if Elected Obama won't survive to inaugeration.

Giving him a black VP would mean bumping him off would still leave America with a Black President.

That calculation of course would just ruin the plans of whichever secret organization conspiracy nuts like this week.

Re:The Race Card. Re:Who does age matter to?

[Chris Burke]

But I, nor any white man I know, is racist.

Well, congratulations on yourself, but how do you know nobody you know is racist? You're white, so they aren't going to be racist against you. And if they know you consider yourself to proudly be non-racist, why would they reveal that to you? Or, maybe, you just don't know the right subset of the population, don't live in the right areas. Is where you live mono-cultural? As in nobody says anything bad about blacks because there aren't any around to bother them? Do you live in a truly integrated neighborhood/city? It seems like it's mostly in the conflict areas, white-dominated areas facing a minority 'incursion', where this happens...

Cus I've certainly met some of them. I've had people openly express their racism to me, under the assumption that I'd be sympathetic as another white man (which I mostly am). I've heard people openly slander blacks in their earshot, even store owners talking trash while black customers are in their store. From Chicago to New York to Texas, I've heard some vile, vile racism.

I can't say this nicely, I assure you I mean nothing personal, but it seems to me the only ones who say there is no anti-black racism in America are simply sheltered from it.

Not that this is ultimately a bad thing... I believe racism is learned, and the more people are simply not exposed to it, and grow up wondering how or why anyone could be racist, the better the next generation will be.

White Americans are, by and large, afraid of even being thought of as racist.

That doesn't mean they aren't. It means they're going to be much less likely to be openly racist unless they're safely among their friends. And even then, not always, but those are the worst cases. Your "average" racist is simply going to leave their mouth shut and wield their racism more subtly.

And given what I've seen and heard, I shudder to think of what would be said and done if there weren't such a huge stigma against it.

We can see the same thing, more obviously, with homophobia. It's starting to get less and less acceptable to be openly anti-gay, at least in the more progressive parts of society, while absolutely not the case in the less-progressive. But has this actually made all these people unwilling to gay-bash into non-homophobes, or has it just made them reluctant to express their discomfort and disgust? Isn't that the inherent joke of "not that there's anything wrong with that", a superficial statement of tolerance that immediately follows a vehement rejection of the very concept?

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Webb, Richardson, or Clark are better choices i

[Chris Burke]

Well the fact is that he told his bosses the truth, and they didn't want to hear it. They told him to go speak a pack of lies, and he did. You can feel free to hold that against him, following orders is no excuse and all that. That doesn't change the fact that in the employ of an administration that wanted to listen to his honest opinions, he would be a tremendous asset.

Re:An alternative they didn't seem to face

[Kjella]

Any survey that says one of the primary party leaders would be the same person for either party is obviously in error.

Why? It reminds me of an example from a class I took once. Imagine you have a beach with two ice cream salesmen, for the exercise assume the customers are uniformly distributed, price is equal and they have no preference or loyalty. Now the theoretically optimal is obviously that they set up at 1/4 and 3/4, each getting half the beach and the customers walk as little as possible. But then, one of the ice cream salesmen decides to stand a little closer to the center, catching more than half. The other moves closer to compensate and so it goes. Eventually they'll stand right next to each other on the middle of the beach. With both fighting for the customers in the center, they'll become more and more equal until there's basicly no difference at all.

Try mapping it directly over to politics, with the customers as the voters and reps/dems as the icecream salesmen and the distance to the ice cream salesmen as the political distance. Everyone's fighting over the independent voters so both focus on what they want. I think what happened here is that you showed they're so close, if one is a little better at buzzword bingo it could "win" both sides. I think he should run for both parties, would be funny... Obama/Powell vs McCain/Powell, maybe it'd clue people in on how little choice they really have.

Re:Unlikely

[lateralus_1024]

"...Usually a Pres. and Vice-Pres. are in the same general age range..."

Not entirely true. Look at Bush/Cheney: Dick Cheney, a known Vampyre, is dated to be at least 450 years old, making him nearly 20 generations older than Bush.

"Not Me!"

[anti-human 1]

Bullshit. Dems deserve blame because they have squandered congressional majorities, and went along with the bullshit (PATRIOT Act for one) the Reps brought to the table. Crying 'Poor us!' then passing totalitarian legislation anyway isn't an excuse from blame, its just being a group of pussies.