A little more in support of Dakota

I once had a conversation with my mother, who was born basically right smack dab in the middle of the baby boom, or more relevantly, during the time that produced the majority of parents of young people with the ability to vote today. I complained once to her about George W. Bush, and she mentioned the fact that as much as we wish it were not the case, JFK was the only president in her lifetime to have been worth anything (presidentially that is) and that he was not given long enough in office to demonstrate his full potential.

So now it's time for me to expand off of that (trust me Dakota, I'm not much of a politician myself, but I'm backing you up on this one). Since the baby boomer era, we have all been a part of the media age - beginning to some small degree with the rapid printing press, expanded far more by the growing popularity of radios, even more with that of television, again in the nineties with the PC era, and now at its highest iteration with the widespread popularity of the cellular phone. We live in an age where generally, less than twenty-four hours will elapse between something occurring, and our ability to hear about it (and that is very generous - most of the time information is available within minutes). I would even venture as far as to say, the American public knows too much about its government, and prospective leaders, and that knowledge causes us to have unnecessarily high expectations of our presidents - not to say that they should not be able to deliver, but that they are promising more than they can, in order to please the public.

Let's examine not only the places where some of our more recent presidents had shortcomings, but where those shortcomings have been complicated by what took place in reality. A perfect example - Georgey Sr. is famous for his speech at the Republican National Convention. After a long period of heavy recession from Carter and Reagan, Bush Sr. stated "Read my lips: no new taxes." Sounds pretty good to me! Peggy Noonan (Bush's speechwriter) definitely knew what she was doing, and what the American Public needed to hear in order to get him the vote. Unfortunately, two years later, under pressure from democrats and many more moderate republicans, he was forced to raise taxes anyway. Clinton's oval office rendezvous gave birth to Bush Jr's "down-home, American values." And this isn't the first time that suspected immorality gave way to a friendly, deep south Christian - many say that Carter won over Ford more because he was not involved with the previous presidencies (i.e. Watergate) and he offered a kind of retribution from the events of the previous few years.

In the upcoming election, Democrats clearly have the advantage - we've had eight years with a president who has not been in the public's support for at least four years, thanks to an extremely unpopular war. Democrats tend to be more on the pro peace platform, and that's what Americans want. In my opinion, however, we're in deeper than we want to admit. I think that we are still far away from peace between the middle east and the u.s. simply because nothing has truly been resolved (there is a lot to be said for the opinion that we can't exactly figure out what needs to be resolved, but that will make this rant go on for way longer than it already has). The American government has set themselves up with a lose-lose situation. Withdrawing from the Middle East will likely still not do much in the way of helping the economy. And at the end of the war, things will just start over again if we are attacked or bombed again. God forbid, but it is a real concern that we should have. I'm going to set aside the next thought for staying power.

The president cannot control what will happen during their presidency, only those things that they want to prevent from happening.

A president does not usually foresee an economic slump, or being attacked by a foreign power, or saying something incredibly stupid in a speech. Presidents are just people like anyone else, but people with the ability to say yes or no when it comes to new laws (remember our three branches people? President gets to say when we go to war, and besides that, he only okays what others have already decided in other branches of government).

So let me tie this into Dakota's post a little better now that I've offered these disjointed thoughts on government for approximately the last hour of my life. Americans do not vote as often as they should not only because there hasn't been a good president, but because even when we've tried to pick a good one, they have failed at what we really wanted them to accomplish, because their platform is more about image than implementation. Even looking at hot button issues, what would you do if you were president? Take gay marriage for example: alright I would just go ahead and okay that one, fuck you Conservative Christians :). Seriously though, gay marriage. If your paycheck and popularity as the SINGLE MOST RECOGNIZABLE CELEBRITY IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY depended largely on making people like you no matter what, I would take the moderate route a good deal as well. We offer our citizens the freedom to believe what they'd like to, but human nature is to remain divided about 50/50 on any issue in the world. We are better at complaining than praising. Even small steps forward are seen as "not far enough" to the side that supports and "way beyond the line" to those that are opposed. It is simply impossible to please a nation that wants the economy to improve, gas prices to go down, the war to end, and everyone of its opinions to be eventually on the level with the nation's goals.

So where do we go from here? People will not start voting regularly unless they feel that what they do in a vote matters - and after the hanging chad fiasco a few years back, it will likely be years until that trust is restored. Some progress has been made though. We are in the midst of a social and cultural revolution. In our generation, we're simply expected to be more well-versed in just about everything - because even someone who never leaves the house can be an expert in pretty much any field they want to at the click of a button. Already, at least the younger population is already leaning to more moderate stances, because we can read both sides of the argument, instead of only hearing what we want. As much of a pain in the ass as it was, I'm glad my high school does a three day long formal debate every junior year - at least it's nice to know that whether or not people like it, they at least hear what both sides have to say.

So I kinda went all over the place on that one, and mixed in some stuff that really wasn't on the topic of where I started, but I'm not getting graded on this, so deal with it!