Never before in my life have I felt a need to make much of a comment on a Presidential Election Day in the U.S. This Presidential Election Day seems different. I don’t know if it is because it has been such a hard fought and acrimonious campaign. Could be it is because we have two rather untraditional candidates – the first woman candidate in the history of the U.S. and a rather bombastic private businessman? Maybe it’s because the rhetoric has been ramped up to a level I’ve never heard before? Perhaps it’s because every one I talk to is very apprehensive about what will happen after this election, even though the U.S. has always had a peaceful transfer of power.
Perhaps it is because the Democratic candidate for President has been under some sort of investigation for 25 years, since her husband, Bill Clinton, was President of the United States. The Republican candidate for President has not been in the political limelight for very long but since he has been, he, too, has been under investigation.
I hear Americans constantly ask why we could not have done better in picking our political candidates. I have a question to pose to you. Would any candidate who we picked have been subject to some sort of investigation because we, as Americans, can’t seem to get our fill of dragging skeletons out of our candidates’ closets? I’ve noticed a real lack of viable political candidates at the next age group point, 10-20 years younger than Trump and Clinton. That is true, I think, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle. Why is that? Are the good people who would normally run for political office simply tired of facing the possibility of their families being subject to the unbelievable amount of scrutiny we subject our candidates to? It seems at least to be a possibility.
Who exactly is responsible for all this skeleton dragging? Is it truly the news media? Or is it principles of the opposing party in trying to win the election? Or a combination of both? Every single person who might run for political office has done something wrong at some point in their lives and careers. It is simply not possible to live a squeaky clean life just in case you might go into public service. We are going to cause ourselves to literally have no candidates by our behavior regarding their behavior if we don’t allow them to have a life, business and professional and governmental, if they are already in government service. Can we really feel good about what we have allowed the news media and the political parties to do to these people’s families? Don’t say it isn’t our fault because it is. We watch the cable news shows or they would not be on the air. We buy into every word the talking heads say. It is, indeed, our fault.
Our propensity for finding each and every little fault in our candidates may be our downfall this time around. We have two candidates that no one seems to much like, putting many of us in the position of voting for who we consider to be the lesser of two evils. That is not America! That is not the way America handles its business. We find two excellent candidates and choose between them in a democratic process. Not so much this time.
Now we have a situation where, if Hillary Clinton wins the Presidency, rumors are swirling around that state militias will get involved and that she will not be supported. On the other hand, if Donald Trump wins, rumors are that he will not win wide support of the American people for a variety of reasons. In a day, we are going to vote for these two people under these circumstances?
Here is the deal. We, the people, caused this ourselves. We have encouraged the talking heads on cable news to do anything and say anything for ratings. We have expected candidates to be perfect people. Instead we got the least perfect of candidates. We have allowed senators and representatives to stay in Congress for 30 plus years and build up power bases so that their only concerns were money and power and not the good of our country or our democracy. Term limits anyone? Even the Supreme Court allowed for huge Super Pac’s to fund candidates’ political campaigns. We can’t say one candidate or another is corrupt. What is corrupt is the entire system and do you know where it starts? With US, the American voters. We have allowed these things to happen.
This is OUR government. OUR democracy. Have we forgotten that? We can get rid of the entire Congress if we want and we SHOULD want. We can push the reset button. Almost all the Congress is up for re-election on Tuesday. DO NOT RE-ELECT THEM. Elect a new Congress. One that is responsive to the people and to the President. One that will work with all parties involved.
Stop listening to the talking heads on any channel on cable news television. Buy a newspaper again. Read the newspaper. Form your own opinions. Don’t let some person on television whose credentials you don’t know form an opinion for you. Read, study, think. Decide what YOU think. Don’t take what they think at face value. That is one of the reasons we are in this mess. Knowledge is power.
It’s too late for us for this election cycle. I hope we can make it intact as a government for the next four years. I hope we can have a peaceful transfer of power. Let’s make it different in 2020. #2016PresidentialElection #realDonaldTrump #HillaryClinton #politics #amwriting #amblogging
The Write Scribe 