Now that both campaigns are full up, VP's and all, I feel like I can write about my own personal torment.
Realistically, I am one in 305 million people in the country (Population Clock, Censes bureau). About a two thirds of the country is legally eligible to vote and approximately 150 million will vote this year. Here in Texas I am one in about 13 million. When you look at it like that, its daunting. I'm just a drop in the bucket, a drop in Lake Travis.
"When you vote, you are exercising political authority. You're using force. And force my friend is violence, the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived."
---Starship Troopers
While I do not share such an extreme opinion with Robert A. Heinlein, voting is the one control I have over my, our, government without being directly involved in policy making, enforcing, or justifying. When we vote for a particular candidate, we express not support for the ideas that they might espouse on the campaign trail, but faith in that person, that when pressed to make a decision about the direction of our country, they will lead us to something good. They will lead us to something, to somewhere better than we are now. This is where our current situation gives me pause.
On the one hand we have Barak Obama. A fantastic orator, charasmatic, talks big. He is inspiring in a way I have never seen in politics. He talks about change like Willy Wonka talks about chocolate. But he has only been on the national political scene for 4 years.
On the other hand we have John McCain, a moderate conservative, who stirred up some controversy in his party for reaching so whole heartedly across the aisle on the failed Illegal Immigration reform bill. He's a decorated vietnam veteran and has twenty plus years in the senate. But he is on the old side and he is in the same political party as G W (which is almost automatically a strike for anyone).
As I was thinking about writing this post, I thought of the Michael Douglas movie The American President. Why can't it be that simple? We have a some what clean guy trying to run a clean campaign. He's running against a jerk pulling up mud from every possible hole and slinging it. The clean president doesn't respond to the accusations because he wants to rise above, but then at the end of the third act he responds to all the criticisms at once in a blazing speech that causes every american to vote for him in the end. Unfortunately, this election isn't that simple.
We've heard a barrage of comments about why either candidate is unfit to lead this country. Barak Obama is inexperienced, playing on his celebrity rather than his policy and issues. McCain is nothing more than a third term for Bush. Both of these comments are somewhat founded in reality, then distorted for the purposes of our sound-bite culture.
I find myself in a tough spot because neither of these senators has won my vote, not yet. I am not taken in by Obama's celebrity. I became wary of him when I first heard murmur of Barak as the future of the democratic party two weeks after he was sworn in as a senator. Sorry, that is not enough time to know that. McCain is old. He has a tendancy to be misguided on economic issues (I still don't believe in the trickle down theory).
I was hoping the VP selection would help guide me a little more. But alas it did not. Barak, the candidate for change, chose Biden, a part of the machine that needs changing. Biden does give him a little more credibility as far as experience but I would truly feel more comfortable with the democratic ticket if it were reversed. McCain, who announced this afternoon, chose Sarah Palin, first term governor of Alaska. She helps him appeal more to the conservative right while also hopefully picking up some of the disenfranchised Hillary supporters. But she's only got two years experience as a Governor. I have to ask, would she be ready to take over in the event that McCain is incapacitated? I don't know.
The VP selection didn't get me any closer to a choice. Next time I talk issues.
Peace,
B
P.S. Sorry for the lack of conclusion. I'm tired.
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