What initially drew me to Obama was his insistence on the need to change the political makeup and dealings in our government. No more "Politics as usual", which served to describe Hillary Clinton, the current administration, and pretty much the entire recent history of politics in our country.
Too much corruption, influence by special interests, irresponsibility and incompetence. Barack was going to be bringing something new, something fresh. There were going to be no attack ads, no negative campaigning, no divisiveness from this movement. He was going to conduct a campaign without stooping to the level of his opponents.
Surely this was a good thing right? It sounded great. Rise above the usual pettiness and bullshit that American politics has been known for. However, as much as Obama has tried to run a squeaky clean campaign, it was all but inevitable that there would be road bumps and different unexpected challenges. Reverend Wright. Michigan and Florida. Clowns on FOX news bringing up his middle name, Hussein, as if it should disqualify him from serving as President. Here for more media bullshit.
What I'm trying to get to is the fact that no matter how hard Barack tried to run a different campaign, there are going to be people who try to drag his name through the mud, dig up any dirt they can on him and find, however minuscule, chinks in his armor. The ideal way to face this type of garbage would be to ignore it, focus on policy, work to reach out to as many constituents as possible and just rise above the triviality of it all. However, if you try to do this and act in a dignified and classy way by not even addressing these things that have somehow passed for 'news'.
If you don't respond and attack back, you are considered weak. If you don't address these ridiculous statements that the media blows up, it makes you look as if you have something to hide. I am too young and inexperienced to proclaim myself as some expert of how government should be run, but it seems to me that if we had a chance to redesign an ideal political system, it would look significantly different than what we have today.
The focus needs to be on which candidate can best help our country and serve the most people. Who can best address the problems in our economy, health care system, education, environment, foreign policy and other areas that are in dire need of attention?
In our current culture of 24 hour news channels and people eating up and demanding the most sensational news stories, it seems to be tough to get every voter to focus on the key factors during this critical election year. Are American voters intelligent enough to recognize and understand how different policy choices effect our country and our citizens lives? Hope lies in the feeling that people are fed up enough with the current state of affairs to try to change things AND still somehow believe that we have the power to change things.
1 comment:
Don't get too carried away with Obama. As of now I support him too, but at the end of the day, he's still a politician. I'm not saying he's a bad man, but nobody is getting to that level of power without some measure of bullshit spewing, corruption, and/or compromise of what you truly believe in... because successful candidacies require immense amounts of money and the only way to get that money is to please the people who have it.
Do you really think if Obama is elected there is going to be some dramatic transformation of politics in America? Just like any other president, he'll still be highly constrained by political pressure from his supporters, two other branches of government known as Congress and the Courts, public opinion and what issues they care about, etc.
I still think he has the potential to be a great president, he's definitely a thoughtful, intelligent guy. But the whole "hope" and "change" thing is a little gimmicky.
Aside from that, I agree with the media being annoying. The latest Obama fist bump thing is so ridiculous. Everyone knows what a fucking fist bump means, people in the media are the only assholes pretending they don't.
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