Ahh, it is time again for the great tradition of choosing our leader for the next four years. It is supposed to be a great time, a time of celebration, hope and renewal.
After four years, the political processes begin again and we can all remind ourselves of the importance and power of being able to vote. And we stand united, divided only by our personal beliefs that we have too many great leaders to choose from, and that is why we vote differently. We are ready to vote as Americans for a grand cause and the solidification of our futures. We vote to make our nation stronger.
Obviously, that is far from the way it really seems to be, especially during this election year. America seems to have reached its apex, and we are now on a slide down from our empire. As one of the professors at NU put it, “The American Empire is on its way out. It happened to the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Russians, etc. and now it is happening to us, we just choose not see it.” If you look closely you might be able to see the demise, the jaded, apathetic youth, the corporate scandals, the world view of our nation and even our presidential race.
What I cannot believe is that if this nation is one in decline, if we truly have reached the apex, why do we not care? Maybe it’s the threshold effect: We won’t care until things become so bad that we no longer have a choice but to care because it will threaten our lives too directly. And right now, we are getting ready to elect a president, and two men are deep in the “trenches” squaring off and preparing to “battle it out” in all the “battleground” states and only one will come out of it all “alive.” That is the rhetoric of our presidential race. How is it that two men, better yet two parties, and maybe even better, one nation, speak of the greatest and most important positive action of our nation every four years in terms of war? I really don’t know, but it surely makes little sense.
Maybe in some ways it is a fight, and the candidates need to stand on the stump and need to rally before the great debates, but it is far from a war, and it only makes the problem worse. Our country needs to start refocusing its energies into being positive, it needs to start mending fences that alienate people and to start to deconstruct this obnoxious fabric of blanket-party-politics that has gone from warming the politically cold to suffocating anyone that dares try to have an idea in this land.
All the third parties get no due, and so their words become more incensed and they all start pushing nonsense issues and the Republicans and Democrats have squared off so hard at each other that the donkey and the elephant are sporting red and blue boxing trunks and going for every below-the-belt shot they can find.
Politicians that serve the public to gain power, and the ultimate power of being president, will resort to low-blows as often as possible. They will challenge every little word spoken by their competitor and will do all they can, spending millions of dollars, to trick the public into believing their rival is really the true form of Rosemary’s baby.
The negativity does nothing. It only makes us not appreciate who we are putting in office and we get comments like the one made by my co-worker: “Well I will make fun of John Kerry when he is in office, I mean I hate the guy, he sucks, but at least he is better than Bush, so I have to vote for him.” That right there is the sum of the problem, and the solution begins in the hands of our leaders.
We need our political leaders and presidential hopefuls to be in office, not for personal power reasons, but to salvage a land that has gone awry. We need leaders who lead because they know they are needed. It is service, not a paycheck. John Kennedy was only kidding when he was asked about being president and responded, “The pay is good.” We don’t need 900-page biographies, we need leaders that care and serve to save this nation and expand it so that we can help the vast majority of people. We need leaders that don’t look across the country in red or blue tinted glasses, but are willing to see the full spectrum of colors that we all live in.
But, alas, that will have to wait until 2008. The negative attacks have begun and the parties are in their blitzkrieg mode and just shoveling as much donkey and elephant dung into the faces of the people as possible, and all we can do is chew it up, swallow it all down and then vote for the one that makes us the least sick. God bless America, and hopefully soon.
– Pete Bandel is a senior political science major.
