Code Neon Blue!

(x-posted like woah!)

One of the things that impresses me about the Udall campaign so far is how eager they are to try new ways to reach out to voters. For example, Friday afternoon they held a conference call where Mark Udall talked with a batch of bloggers. I’m not sure how I made the list, since I am a bit of a new bee in the pol-blogging world. (I’m not too proud to admit this was a big boost to my self-esteem!) Since they were nice enough to include me, I feel like it’s only polite to actually, you know, blog about the call.

Caveat: The call started at 3:00 Mountain time, just a little bit after my son got home from school. I probably missed some details due to one ear being subjected to a dramatic soliloquy about a package of computer games he bought with his own money which STILL has not arrived nearly two weeks after the purchase.

Mr. Udall’s topic was his recent visit to Afghanistan. He did a short introduction more or less retelling, in his own words, some of the background info that he had sent out the day before in an email. He then took questions.

I didn’t ask any. Foreign policy isn’t one of my strong points, and everyone else was doing pretty well coming up with thoughtful things to ask. I just sat back to listen and learn. One of the things I learned was that if I get a chance to do something like this in the future, I should take notes with a pen instead of trying to type one-handed. My notes? Not remarkably useful….

The text of Mr. Udall’s email is up at SquareState.net right now, and will probably appear soon on his own web site, so I won’t paraphrase it here. Instead, I will just share some thoughts I came away with.

I was impressed that his answers didn’t sound like pre-scripted sound bites. I feel like he has spent a lot of time studying and THINKING about Afghanistan and its neighbors, and a bad situation that is not showing many signs of changing for the better any time soon. His ideas on what to do about it won’t please everyone, but it seems to me he is at least framing them around practicality and a sincere desire to fix the problems. That’s a whole lot better than what we have in that department NOW.

My other conclusion is that the more I try to give equal mental time to all the important issues, the more I become inclined to cut at least SOME politicians a little more slack. There’s SO MUCH that is wrong, that needs fixing NOW. Trying to do everything at once seems overly-optimistic, but trying to pick and choose which fire to put out first? Daunting. (Or is that just me being a Libra?)

Maybe what we need is to put people in office who have a strong commitment to doing what is right, but are mentally flexible about how that is to be done. From what I have seen and heard so far, Mark Udall sounds like that type of candidate. I really hope I’m right.