September 17, 2008
-
Marrying Obama? and other Political Thoughts…
Faith. As a non-religious person, I suppose it’s pretty odd that I leave my voting decision up to faith. I just have to hope that my candidate is really going to do some good. There’s no way of really knowing. There isn’t; no one can tell me differently. If someone thinks they know what will happen with either candidate, then I’d like to find out where they live because they have a time machine.
It’s gotten to the point where no one really cares to focus on any particular issue (or maybe it’s always been that way – political times like these get so blurry… who said what, who attacked whom, blahblahblah) - both sides are just going back and forth with meaningless banter. Maybe the debates will straighten out some stuff, maybe they won’t. Either way, no matter what is said during those debates, my mind is made up. It was four years ago and eight years ago. Did my candidates “get in” then? Of course not. But I voted, so I can complain.
I’ve educated myself on what both have said and done. Even within those confines, though, it’s hard to know exactly what to educate WITH? What can be read that’s objective? My women’s magazines? (They’ve all leaned to the liberal side of things, which, as a liberal, I can admit to). Newsweek? The Daily Show? MSNBC? Obama’s book? Fox News? Practically everything has some slant to it, yes? And for every person like myself who reads up (from various sources) on what each candidate has said and done, there are probably ten people that are just going to vote based on practically no knowledge whatsoever.
At one point, way back when, after McCain admitted that if backing the Iraq war hurts his chances for becoming the GOP nominee, then so be it… I remember saying, “Wow. That’s pretty cool of him to just say, ‘Oh well, I backed it and I’ll pay that price.’ He didn’t try to run around and pretend he didn’t or whatever.” I appreciated that honestly. Although I don’t agree with much of what he stands for, at one point I did admire him a bit. That has faded since.
Maybe that Election Day is a little bit like the start of a short-term marriage. We go into it with the best of intentions, hoping the other person doesn’t cheat on us. That we don’t have constant fights about money or the kids. That we will get along with our neighbors and their dog won’t poo in our yard. We hope our mate will take out the garbage, clean up around the house, and put the seat down. Typically, we do a lot of “research” on our future mates. We date them, we ask them questions, and then when we think we’ve found “the one” we bring up the “M-word” and go from there. There are shotgun marriages, though, and arranged ones… so the outcome is unknown even more so with those.
Comments (2)
Finally, someone who actually knows what they’re talking about in politics, rather than just choosing someone that they have no idea about.
Awesome analogy!! Electing a president is like entering into a short-term marriage. That really sums it up clearly.