Since this edition of the Daily is the last one before elections begin for the Government of the Student Body Senate, presidency and vice presidency, now is probably the best — and fairest — time for the editorial board to offer an opinion on the two slates of candidates running for president and vice president. 

Rather than endorsing one campaign or the other, we will offer our opinion on the merits and shortcomings of each. This retains our practice from the presidential election in November as well as last year’s practice.

We interviewed Spencer Hughes and Hillary Kletscher on Feb. 22. After an interview that lasted nearly two hours, one thing in particular stood out in our minds: If one thing is sure about their administration — should they be elected — they will not lack ideas to work on.

Hughes and Kletscher want to reorder Senate meetings; change the name of the free speech zone outside the library to prevent the assumption that outside the library is the only place students have First Amendment rights; merge two programs that facilitate in-class participation among students; eliminate compensation for the president, vice president, and finance director; begin a bike-share program to allow students to borrow bikes on campus; continue working toward allowing students to use Dining Dollar$ and CyCash at restaurants off campus; add more solar trash compactors to campus; and allow students to communicate with the Student Answer Center in Beardshear Hall via text messages, tweets and other digital forms of communication, among other ideas.

The phrase “campaign promises” often gets bandied about in political circles in a derisive way, as if making too many was bad in that the politician in question was promising too much while knowing that he or she could never begin to accomplish all of them. The classic fear of the famous Renaissance politician Machiavelli is the fear of a politician who will say anything he can to obtain office.

Of course, that is not the problem with Hughes and Kletscher. Their problem in accomplishing all those ideas is that they have one year in office and, being students, will possess a very limited amount of power and influence when working with the university employees who will actually put those ideas into effect.

Additionally, with so many ideas, it might be difficult for them to choose a starting point. These priorities will exist in addition to the ordinary duties of the GSB president and vice president. Hughes and Kletscher make much of their relatability to the students for whom they will work (carrying that relatability in the promise to forego executive payments), but they may find themselves like a student who has a to-do list of a dozen items, all of which are equally important, equally feasible and all of which are due in two days. Where to start? In order to be effective, a burst of energy should be focused in one direction.

Giving so much attention to campaign promises, rather than balancing the internal and external functions of GSB, also seems to view GSB as one cohesive entity that interacts occasionally with the student body. But the leader of any organization, in being a figurehead, must unite the organization and harmonize its disparate (and sometimes conflicting) parts.

Those are some of our thoughts. We will leave an endorsement, however, to you, when you vote on March 11 or 12.