The Meaning of Endorsements

This afternoon former themostsearched-endorsed Utah Senate candidate Cherilyn Eagar herself in turn endorsed current Senate candidate Tim Bridgewater (Deseret News).

Somewhere along the years, I deprecated endorsements of political candidates: that is, in casting my own vote I enjoy doing my own vetting process rather than subserviating to someone else's opinion. Nevertheless endorsements serve as interesting windows acutely into the endorser and as anchored starting points into political vetting.

As the race between Bridgewater and Lee enters its final days of maturation, Eagar's endorsement is hardly a starting vetting place for me; and as Eagar leaned toward Bridgewater during post-campaign remarks the endorsement came as little surprise. Thus for me, Eagar's endorsement does nothing to clear nor cloud my own analysis of this race. I hope to soon finalize my own thoughts on this race.

On Presidential Endorsements

Lately, I have been in preponderance that our President should decline to be leader of their respective political party. One of the things that appealed to voters voting for President Obama was his campaign communiques that he was "post-partisan." Obama has failed miserably on that account as acutely exampled in the ramming through of Obamacare in a most partisan way. I feel our Presidents should not be actively endorsing candidates A to Z of their respective parties, instead working on leading the country in solving the limited breadth of problems they are responsible to do.

In his 1792 farewell address Washington warned us on the dangers of political parties:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the
spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and
countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful
despotism.

In my vision of "What would Washington do?" it would be exactly this on their first day in office: renounce being head of the Party. The Chief Executive, as our Supreme Court, should be above partisanship and the politicking of endorsement; and being the leader of a private political party does nothing to speak of representing the interests of ALL AMERICANS. While Washington might advocate the complete abolition of political parties, Executive declination of the leadership role while remaining part of the party would be a tremendous step in the right direction.

++++ Update 6/10:
It looks like Bennett is jumping on the endorse-Bridgewater bandwagon (SL Tribune). That is one endorsement I'd like to see Bridgewater decline but of course he won't because it is and has been politics as usual for Bridgewater.