"A Tax-Cutting Democrat
In July 2006 the Wall Street Journal touted New Mexico's governor Bill Richardson as a man who "embraced tax cutting and benefited politically." The Journal quoted Richardson approvingly for advising his party that "we have to be the party of growth and the American dream, not the party of redistribution." Which party is Richardson talking about? The Democrats.
...
Richardson says: "Cutting taxes and creating tax credits can be essential to creating jobs and a strong economy." One of his first measures after he was elected governor in 2002 was to cut New Mexico's top income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent over five years. "This was our way of declaring to the world that New Mexico is open for business," Richardson told the Journal in 2005.
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/333khsla.asp?pg=1

From different Weekly Standard article:
"Here is what the Hollywood mogul told the New York Times gossip columnist:

I don't think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is--and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?--can bring the country together. Obama is inspirational, and he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. "
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/319zlxge.asp

One could say that Richardson and Obama are quite different. IF Obama is inspirational, then Richardson is not inspirational. Obama is inexperienced and Richardson is experienced. If Obama is exciting, Richardson is rather dull.
Richardson is governor of New Mexico and New Mexico seems like it could the Silicon Valley of Space exploration- that could be an important aspect to me, but maybe much less important to people less interested in opening up the space frontier.

But all the above doesn't matter for a number of reasons. First, they would need to win their primaries. And to win their primaries they have be seen as having the best chance of winning the election and be able to energize their base. Second if elected can they be effective as President. It's the second aspect which what I'm interested in, rather than the horse race aspect. For instance, do we really want a President who isn't "incredibly polarizing"? What kind of president in our past fits that description? Certainly not someone like Reagan, JFK, or FDR. Basically any President that wants or needs to do anything "big" will be polarizing. With that said, I think Obama or Richardson would be people who wouldn't be "incredibly polarizing"- assuming you classify presidents Carter or Nixon as not polarizing.

Ben Stein [not some one running for president- and known for wanting to cut taxes and reduce government] recently on Fox News said he favored increasing taxes to those that make more than a million dollars per year. He said this because he said he came to the conclusion that cutting spending just wasn't going to happen- simply an unrealistic expectation. And he wanted more money spent on our military and wanted to reduce our national debt. And since he is aware that people making more than a million dollar per year were already paying for most of the taxes, he thought if they simply paid 10% more of their current tax bills this would generate the money needed. In other words if someone is currently paying say 100,000 in federal taxes then they would instead pay 110,000 in taxes- in other words a simple surcharge to existing tax system [a surtax].

Now, what Stein said does make some economic [and political] sense, if you realize that we have low unemployment and fairly high economic growth. And of course accept the fact that the public does not seem to strongly desire making the government lower it's spending. I would also add that it seems that the most powerful political group of America are those who are making more than a million per year [and their effect on the public seems to always encourages more govt spending]. So if they want to spend more of their money on taxes, shouldn't the general public go along with this idea? Seems fair to me, maybe we can simply keep on adding to this surtax until they decide they are paying enough- or it starts to bite in terms of higher unemployment and/or lower growth.
Of course the flaw is the idea that this money would actually go to US soldiers and that govt will lower it's deficit spending. But the political reality is the Dems do control congress and they say they want to tax the rich and they say they want to support the troops.

Now, it could argued that with our current economic growth and our current spending we are reducing our deficit. The argument against that is we shouldn't assume our economic growth will continue and we might need to significantly [10 to 20%] increase our size of our military [with no chance of reducing other types of government spending].

With all this said, who should be President? Someone who takes any kind of radical departures or someone who is less polarizing?