Mike Gravel is a waste of our time

There was a point in the YearlyKos presidential forum when Mike Gravel, asked to defend his ridiculous 23 percent national sales tax (on top of local and state sales taxes), grumpily responded with something along the lines of "Don't worry about the fair tax, it will never pass Congress."

Of course, the question wasn't about his proposal's chances in the legislature, but about the proposal itself. Gravel essentially said, "I won't defend my proposal, but if you disagree with it, don't worry -- you can still vote for me since it won't pass."

This demonstrated a profound lack of respect for the democratic process. We're looking for two things, really, when evaluating our presidential candidates. First of all, we want a candidate whose vision of the future is as close to ours. Of course no one will be perfect, but the closer, the better, and a candidate's proposals and priorities most definitely matter.

Second of all, we want a president who has the chops to enact as much of his agenda as possible. That means building popular support for his or her agenda, and using that political capital to move Congress toward enacting that agenda. (I mean, look at Mr. 25% -- as unpopular as he was, he strong-armed a sizeable minority of Democrats to spit on the Constitution and endorse his unitary executive).

Gravel has no interest in building support for one of his signature proposals, he thinks his policies shouldn't matter in our decision whether to support him or not, and he has no interest in arguing that he could get that legislation through Congress -- in other words, an effective president.

So why the hell is he wasting our time on those debate stages? At least Kucinich pretends his agenda matters. Gravel won't even give us that courtesy.

p.s. This community isn't a hotbed of support for either Kucinich or Hillary, but they were both treated respectfully and warmly. Gravel was a running joke throughout the convention. People were laughing at him.

p.p.s. In 40 years, if I make it that far, I'll be a grumpy cynical guy just like Gravel.