EDITORIAL: Bernie Sanders’ honesty refreshing, albeit crazy

Socrates once said that he was “really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”

While Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders appears to be in good health, his unabashed honesty means his White House campaign is dead on arrival.

Sen. Sanders is as hard left as they come: an avowed socialist. He would like to see banks broken up and the federal government take over the oil and gas industries. He doesn’t think Obamacare goes far enough, and he supports instituting a single-payer health care system instead. He backs roughly doubling the size of federal infrastructure investment to a whopping $1 trillion over a five-year period. He would like to see Social Security benefits expanded, and he thinks taxes should be raised in order to make it happen. He also has called for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and would welcome a top tax rate of (yes) 90 percent.

Sen. Sanders has zero shot at being elected president. Most of his ideas sound like the ramblings of a crazy person. But you know what? At least he’s honest about his vision. Sen. Sanders proposes what he believes in, and doesn’t shy away from defending his views, no matter how ridiculous. Voters know exactly what they’re going to get from him. The same can’t be said about his opponents for the Democratic nomination.

Who, exactly, is front-runner Hillary Clinton? According to the beltway media, we’re looking at version 5.0. The latest version says we “have to stand up to the people who want to keep the deck stacked in favor of those at the top,” while she travels the globe pulling down between $100,000 and $335,000 for each of her many speaking engagements. About the only things we can say for sure about Mrs. Clinton are that she really, really, really wants to be president, and that we can’t ever really be sure about a single thing she says.

And who is Sen. Elizabeth Warren? For starters, before she was a populist, anti-corporate crusader who attacked speculators for flipping houses, she was a very successful house flipper who voted Republican.

And what about the man they’re trying to replace?

President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was crafted to conceal his politics and present him as a center-right unifier who would bring hope and change. Remember his vote as a senator against raising the debt ceiling? Not only did he have no desire to work with Republicans, he hasn’t shown much interest in working with Democrats, either. He promised the “most transparent administration in history” and instead delivered more hostility to openness than anyone before him.

What about the Republicans running for his office? If we elect any of them, will we actually get what they promise on the campaign trail? Probably not. Instead of smaller government and lower taxes, we can look forward to more government and more debt.

But we know what we’ll get from Bernie Sanders: A president committed to single-payer health care, nationalized oil and gas, a $15-an-hour minimum wage and a top tax rate of 90 percent. And we’ll get a candidate unafraid of debating his disastrous ideas.

If only every presidential candidate were as honest as Bernie Sanders. And if only Bernie Sanders weren’t crazy.