All things being equal: The PR voting strategy

Back in January, I rated the Democratic presidential candidates "in order of teeny-bopper acceptability," arguing that the better-looking the next president, the better off our country will be. The ideal candidate would be one "most likely to make even the most avowed anti-Americans swoon."

That was my suggestion for the Democratic primary. My advice for the general elections isn't so different. All things being equal (as they are to Naderites and swing voters), we ought to put in office the slate most likely to make other countries hate us less. While this may seem like suggesting that we let the world outside the U.S. determine our next president, it really just amounts to looking after the country's best interests: good PR, provided by whichever slate is less offensive to people around the world, can only serve to make Americans safer.

For those who are already convinced that, say, invading Iraq was a wonderful/horrible idea that has made America safer/a bigger-than-ever target for terrorists, the PR strategy is clearly not worth bothering with. Responses to the PR strategy suggestion along the lines of "how could you say that PR is more important than the Iraq war being a wonderful/horrible idea" are thus missing the point--there are a lot of people out there who do see good and bad in what Bush has done, good and bad in what Kerry might do, and are looking for something--anything--to tip the scales. There are plenty of more concrete points for and against Bush and Kerry, but these can all cancel one another out after enough switching between reading the National Review and the national politics section of the Village Voice, after watching Fahrenheit 9/11 and then reading Christopher Hitchens sharp critique of it. For those voters who are uncertain as to which candidates would keep the country safest, the PR approach is a decent one.

People around the world already hate Bush, whereas Kerry is more of an unknown quantity, as he has not yet been president and is notable to those not carefully following the campaings mainly for being the person the "Beat Bush" folks are now promoting by default. Then again, Kerry is no Clinton and does not seem the sort who will seduce the world with his charm.

I leave it up to WWPD readers to determine whether Kerry-Edwards or Bush-Cheney wins the PR contest, or, for that matter, whether to use the PR voting strategy in the first place.