How to Vote (part 1)

Here, once again this seemingly endless election season, is a hapless plea to all those capable of doing so to think for themselves. Listen to friends if it seems socially prudent, to the media if you must, and to the TV and radio bloviation generation if you've been constipated for quite some time and really need help clearing out your system (as always, I offer an alternative in the form of a thousand laxatives). But in the end, decide who you're going to vote for based upon two things, and only two things:

1) Given the current domestic and international environments that currently prevail and how I and/or people whose opinions I trust anticipate those environs will develop and change during the next four years, do I believe this person will make a good leader of the United States?

2) Given that this person will have an extraordinary amount of power, to influence national legislation, to issue short-term executive orders that can have a dramatic effect on my life and the lives of those around me, and to appoint federal court and Supreme Court judges who can interpret the U.S. Constitution in ways that can have a dramatic and indefinite effect on my life and the lives of those around me, do I agree with this person's stances on various issues that I deem important, and can I trust this person to adhere to his/her stances and act accordingly?

Much as you may be tempted, you're going to want to avoid following the media blitz of jumping on every regrettable comment or misstatement (or deliberate misinterpretation thereof) made by any of the candidates. Regardless of their respective strengths and weaknesses, the three front runners are irrefutably human, and when pontificating in public 20-30 times a week for a year and a half, any human is going to make a gaffe, and likely several.

While I can't confirm this for certain, I'd be comfortable making the following assumptions:

-John McCain does not actually want to keep 130,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq continuously through the year 2103;

-Hillary Clinton does not believe she faced the same magnitude of danger during her visit to Bosnia as a commissioned soldier;

-Barack Obama does not agree with every statement the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has ever uttered (I'd be inclined to believe no one agrees with everything ever said by the spiritual leader of his/her church, synagogue, stake, mosque, etc., and I'd be far more worried about anyone who does so than I would about some inconsequential, hate-spewing bloviator who reaches a couple thousand Chicagoans from a local pulpit once a week);

-Michelle Obama, having reached legal adulthood in 1982, has not hated or been ashamed of the United States every moment, or even a majority of the moments, of the last 26 years.

Try to keep this somewhere at the forefront of your mind: all humans are irredeemably imperfect. Jesus Christ, at least to Christians, was as close to perfect as a human ever came, and he ain't on the ticket this year. And if he were, you know darn well the media and the Democratic surrogates would be all over him for his frequent interaction with a known prostitute, while the Republican mouthpieces would lambast him as not conservative enough because, while he was a religious conservative and staunchly pro-Israel, he was also reportedly a liberal when it came to social welfare (and he well may be the last person who honestly achieved this dichotomy).

Of course, were the aforementioned savior to return to earth tomorrow, it would still take too long for the 38 state legislatures to ratify an amendment to the Constitution allowing someone who is not a natural born citizen of the United States to run for president. And then there's the whole issue of his being Middle Eastern, which means you know damn well he'd be profiled every time he tried to board a plane, a pretty glaring inconvenience when you're trying to campaign across roughly three-and-a-half million square miles. Still, the prospect seems unlikely; launching a grass roots presidential campaign this late in the game would be almost as crazy as telling people you're Jesus Christ himself.

So that leaves McCain, Clinton and Obama, as well as a handful of third-party sacrificial lambs whom the press will give the opportunity to make statements for their respective causes.

Now as always, there will be those who will point out the flaws in my argument, the most glaring of which is the inherent paradox: if you tell me to think for myself, and I do so because I followed your advice, then which am I actually doing? For you, I offer the obvious out: Vote for Obama. Because I said so. Baa-a-a-a-a!!!

{to be continued}

{like it or not}

{and don’t blame me – it takes more than one neglected blog to change a system that would drive M.C. Escher into an asylum}