The Netherlands Takes Your Political Temperature

Making the e-mail rounds is an interesting Dutch web site, Kieskompas, which will gauge your preference for a 2008 US Presidential candidate on the basis of answers to 36 questions ranging from gun control to the war in Iraq to health care coverage. Although it appears that the weight of the answers is evenly distributed when calculating the outcome—meaning that your views on gun control count as much as your views on health care—my experience and that of others is that the analysis pretty much hits the nail on the head. (However, if you tend to be socially liberal and economically conservative, like me, you can end up in an upper-right quadrant no-man’s land, where Ron Paul [Yeesh!] is your closest match.) In any event, it’s fun to try and fun to share with friends and family, and the site also provides a breakdown of your individual answers and how they match up with those of the candidates.

Here are the 3 health care questions and how the candidates responded on the old Likert scale, given the assessment of the Kieskompas creators.

Providing health care is not the responsibility of the government.