05.21.08
The Election
I’m getting kind of tired of hearing about the election. It’s not ’til November and yet it dominates the media. It’s nearly impossible to turn on the radio or surf the web without hearing about superdelegates or campaign fundraising. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care who wins anymore. It seems the system has already done its job. There are three candidates, all of whom have proven themselves able to lead our country. And after all, isn’t that what’s important?
The issues can be very divisive, and they play to the natural human desire for affirmation. We want a candidate to come along and shout from their soapbox the truths we’ve quietly espoused for years. Then we want them to win so we can say “See! See, I was right all along!”
Well, maybe I’m just disillusioned by the failure of any candidate to affirm my beliefs, but I’m starting to question whether the issues really mean all that much. Has any president kept all the promises he made on the campaign trail? Or even half of them? Is the president really so powerful that s/he can effect those promises and enact those beliefs on a meaningful level? Will the political party of the president be remembered in twenty years? Fifty? Two hundred?
Of course there has to be something, some criterion that at least gives the impression of being intellectual–otherwise it would merely be a popularity contest. But the criterion can’t be too cranial, lest the uneducated be unable to participate. Hence, issues!
It seems that the function of our government is to intervene a necessary bureaucracy in between a lot of people far too stupid and far too fickle to run a country (myself included) and the people their decisions would otherwise adversely impact (mostly themselves, but also the rest of the world). I think it might be working.