Too Awakened For the White House?
February 16th, 2057

There can be no doubt about it; the proven fraud in last year's election, and the shortened campaign season announced by congress have conspired to, by far, the most eclectic and diverse group of candidates to ever run for the UCAS' highest office. With a dwarf/troll shaman ticket from the Democratic One World party, an ork VP running for the Republicans, a female mage running the New Century Party, and a great dragon running as an independent, it seems like the "plain vanilla" candidates, Booth and Brackhaven, are the minority.

The choices for the voter seem endless. Who would vote for a plain-jane politician like Booth, when most of the candidates have exotic looks and access to fantastic magical powers? Wouldn't a mage or a shaman be best to deal with the magical bug spirit problem in Chicago? What about a dragon? Nobody really knows what dragons are capable of or how they think; all we know is that they're ancient creatures of great power. Wouldn't Dunkelzahn be able to wave his claw and banish the bugs forever? It seems as though choosing one of the many "awakened" candidates is obviously superior to choosing a "mundane" leader like Booth or Brackhaven.

But is the choice really so simple?

James Booth has years of experience on the hill, with numerous successes in both legislation and foreign policy. His term as VP saw him negotiating tough treaties with our North American neighbors (none of which harbor much love for the old Stars, Leaves, and Stripes), and winning strong terms that favored UCAS trade. Kenneth Brackhaven is a politically intentioned businessman who's had several successes of his own. While neither man is adept at magic, they are, to varrying degrees, clearly adept at governing, and isn't that what we want in a president? After all, what's more important to the UCAS people; conjuring or congress, magic or management?

With recent reports from Knight Errant showing that metahuman magic users, the so-called "insect shamans," are the original source of the bug spirits that inhabit our world (and thus, the Chicago Containment Zone), do we really feel comfortable trusting the White House to Vogel's "eagle" shaman VP, Gary Grey? Do we want, as our leader, a woman who flaunts her membership in a secretive magical order and proposes "integrating" more magic into every UCASer's daily life? Last of all, can the UCAS afford to have a commander-in-chief who is irreperably magical by his very nature, has an unknowable alien mind, predates the time of Christ, and is a multi-ton predatory carnivore?

Maybe now we can see why plain vanilla is so popular.

High School Students Protest Brackhaven Speech

February 13th, 2057

Winnipeg, Manitoba: High school students at Martin Mulroney High School left classes and picketed a planned speech by Archconservative candidate Kenneth Brackhaven. The students, some eleven hundred of them, formed a crowd outside the Mulroney High gymnasium, blocking the entrance, and carrying signs that read "Hope not Hatred," and "No White Hoods in the White House."

The protest, in all likelihood organized by the teachers at Martin Mulroney (though they claim otherwise), refused to disperse and allow Brackhaven and his staff entrance to the gymnasium podium. Martin Mulroney Principal Deborah Eggers, who requested that Brackhaven come and deliver a speech at the school, attempted to break up the crowds with threats of suspensions, but the crowd was unswayed. Instead, many accused Eggers of being a Humanis Policlub member, and cowing to Brackhaven's so-called "racist" agenda.

"This is not entirely unexpected," Brackhaven told NewsFax. "Those who cannot do, teach. Saddly, that axiom is more true now than ever. In today's competitive world, where honest, lucrative positions are available to all citizens with the drive to make something of themselves, only the purely socialistic nature of the UCAS public education system rewards intellectual laziness and radical left-wing and non-human politics. Thus, these radical fringe members of our society, filled with leftist hatred for honest religion, normality, and hard, honest work, are given jobs as teachers and allowed to survive on the teat of government handouts, while simultaneously polluting the hearts of our children with dangerous ideas. This is why I say a fully privatized education system is needed to ensure that only those worthy to cut it in today's world are involved with education."Kenneth Brackhaven was born in 2011. His mother died of complications as a result of his birth. His father, Charles Brackhaven, lavished his son with every luxury, while casting a critical eye on his son as unworthy of the "sacrifice" made by his mother. Kenneth Brackhaven went to Pacific State University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in marketing. He earned his MBA at the Harvard Business School, then went to work in the family investments business. When Charles passed away in 2044, Kenneth Brackhaven stepped up to take over the family business. He invested many resources into politics, through his fundraising and lobbying organization the Citizen's Coalition for Security (CCFS), and became a powerful voice on many political issues, particularly those in which the government unduly burdened ordinary UCAS citizens with unnecessary legislation and taxation purely to benefit non-normative fringe groups. This political influence culminated in his current bid for UCAS president.