GD: LOL- I hate when that happens.

Maybe you're confused with the John McCain 8 years ago

McCain would be a full tanker but his wife would pay for the gas; the media would initially report about how great his lawn looked and praise him for having the guts to borrow a lawnmower from a Democrat while Republicans would say “We told him to use our lawnmower but no…he had to use theirs.” Later, when McCain becomes the GOP nominee for president, the NYT prints several articles again noting the attractiveness of his lawn but also noting that he lent the lawnmower to some lobbyists, including one attractive woman who didn't have an affair with McCain but if readers want to get the impression that some people were concerned that he might have cut her lawn with the borrowed lawnmower, well, who are the NYT reporters to set the record straight?

Obama would give a speech attracting tens of thousands of young people and have all of them donating fistloads of cash to refill the lawnmower and volunteering to clean and return the mower, purchase one for him, and cut his lawn for him for the rest of his life.

Clinton would return the mower in disrepair and with no gas, but would convince a number of people that the Republicans broke the lawnmower and that if she hadn't used up all the gas, they would have anyway- so why blame her?

November, it doesn't change the fact that I've always felt him to be a fairly honest, stright forward, honest guy

McCain would probably hire a lobbyist to clean it for him.

Nader is a 1, and I don't see how anyone could think otherwise. The man has dedicated his entire life to helping others and battling greed.

Obama might be a 1 too. He wouldn't want to do anything that would ruin his chances at electoral success.

You're probably right, Clinton is 4. Either that or 3 given her financial woes.

And I don't know about Barr.

Anyway, I was trying to think of a way to say what you just said in response to GD. There's a difference in interpretation based on whether you are literally considering the lawnmower scenario or if you are using it as a political analogy- and of course how the candidate behaves in your political analogy has more to do with your own political biases than with the candidate's character. For instance, in GD's statement about infrastructure, my own bias would say that the Congressional members who've laden our transportation bills with pork, and the state/local politicians who've steered the funds toward pet projects, are the ones who 'ruined the lawn'.

He and his ilk used up the gas, said there was no shortage, borrowed the gas can from my children and filled up his rich friends' gas-hog riding mower with it, then changed the oil on my lawn without cleaning it up. The lawn is ruined (1.5 trillion in infrastructure neglect), the tank is dry and he charged it all to my kids.