Lecturer Discusses Upcoming Presidential Election

Frequent North Shore Towers lecturer Howard Shurdut spoke about the upcoming presidential elections during a presentation on Monday, October 20 in the VIP Room.
A graduate of Harvard, Shurdut has degrees in psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology and an MBD in international business from Columbia. Along with serving in the United States Air Force in Korea, he spent 30 years working for IBM.
In regards to the 2008 presidential elections, Shurdut said that it is important for people to consider what is right for the future, and not just what is right for themselves.
“In this particular election, I’m voting for my granddaughter,” he said.
At the beginning of his presentation, Shurdut said that there is now a spilt in the Republican party, adding that there have been splits in both parties before. He pointed out that many prominent Republicans have chosen to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, as have most newspapers, including ones that have not endorsed a democrat previously.
“That doesn’t even mean that he will win, but that is sending a message that there’s another split now being observed in the Republican campaign,” Shurdut said.
Shurdut also spoke about the way Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Obama are handling the election.
“To me, Barack Obama is playing a chess game - laid back, contemplative, thinking of three moves ahead,” he said. Shurdut also said that, beginning with selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain is playing checkers. “Checkers is a different game. It’s one move at a time and it’s an immediate response.”
However, Shurdut added that checkers is a more universal game and that using this tactic might not necessarily be a bad thing.
In talking about the campaign, Shurdut said that he feels there should be a limit placed on how much money can be spent, saying that “the party that has all the money has a lot of advantages.”
At one point during his lecture, Shurdut said that he lost a lot of respect for McCain when he selected Palin as his vice president. As residents began to ask questions later on in the evening, someone asked why he felt that way.
“I found her not well-informed [or] well-experienced in the ways of the world. She’s maybe very experienced for Alaska but had no vision, no depth, no educational understanding of history, no geography or anything else that tells me this might be the president,” Shurdut explained. “I would rather have a knowledgeable president that I hate then a dummy I love because the dummy I love is going to get us into more trouble.”
The Electoral College was also discussed. Shurdut said that it is the Electoral College and not individuals who count. He also said that he doesn’t “see how John McCain could ever win the popular vote” but said that he could still win the presidency.
“You don’t have to win the popular vote to win the election,” he said.
Shurdut’s complete lecture can be seen on the in-house channel.