This presidential election: Why I don’t care

This presidential election: Why I don’t care June 20, 2012

I don’t care who will win the upcoming presidential election.

I really don’t.

Oh. I will vote.

I believe in voting.

Good men and women have suffered and died for my right to vote, and I will forever be indebted to them. It is for them that I vote. It is for the men and women who can’t vote that I will vote.

But I am convinced that who I vote into the office of president no longer matters.

The President of the United States is as much a figurehead as the Queen Mother, albeit she’s much more likeable in many ways. (Perhaps we ought to consider electing Betty White?)

Sure, the role of president isn’t determined by something as arbitrary as a blood line. Our candidates buy and leverage their way into our nation’s most powerful position.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the sort of democracy the First Congress had in mind when they proposed the First Amendment, but it’s where we are now. In their day it was considered reprehensible to even campaign for office.

This ability to blow the lid on campaign finance — to pimp out the office of presidency to the highest John — this is what we call progress?

No thank you.

I don’t care if Barack Obama — the man of big hopes and little change — wins. Or if Mitt Romney — the man of unlimited resources and limited vision — wins.

It won’t matter.

The results will be the same — four more years of political pandering and public posturing.

But don’t mistake me for a cynic. I’m a realist. I know who controls the purse strings and it isn’t the president.

It’s Congress.

So don’t bother asking me who I’m voting for president this year. I don’t care who wins this presidential election.

Real progress won’t happen in this country until Congress quits carrying on like a bunch of slow-witted frat boys arguing over old rivalries.

Enough already.

Grow up.

Can’t you see that this country is headed down the Cahulawassee River?

Those expecting deliverance to come by way of Obama are Romney are sure to end up squealing like pigs in the wilderness.

America needs real transformation. The kind that can’t be legislated, orchestrated, or monetized.

The problems we face as a nation are not the result of political policy, or the lack thereof. They are the result of character, and a lack thereof.

No catchy campaign slogan or Wall Street marketing firm will provide us with the hope and change we need as a people and as a nation.

 

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect”

– Mark Twain

 

 

 

 

 

 


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