My Position On The Bailout
Voting Present

My position on the bailout:

Don't have one.

My guess is: you shouldn't either. But that's just a guess.

It's likely that you know more about it than I do. God knows that wouldn't take much. But how much should you know in order to take a position on this, anyway?

Oh, I'm paying attention. Reading. Trying to figure out what's going on. But, as it turns out, I have certain other things in my life I have to attend to as well, and they keep getting in the way.

So I guess I'm going to vote "present" on this one.

Which, incidentally, gives me an opportunity to harp on that point again: ain't nothing wrong with a present vote. Our friends across the aisle like to knock Obama for his high number of them, but my guess is that present is exactly how most people ought to vote (were they voting) most of the time. There are many cases in which we don't know enough to adopt a solid position or vote wisely, and there are many cases in which our reasoning leaves us undecided, and there are many cases in which we're close enough to the center to find either outcome acceptable. Add all those types of cases up, and what you get is: lots of rational present votes. In fact: lots of cases in which any vote other than "present" is irrational. A crap shoot. A coin toss. Noise that obscures the votes of those who do know what's going on.

Anyway, that's where I stand on the bailout FWIW which isn't much.

So I thought I'd turn this into an opportunity for a sermon on the suspention of belief and abstention.

So there it is.

Amen.