Let's avoid hanging chads this time, hmm?

I enjoy a fairly sheltered position from all the economic turmoil of late. I am young; I still live with my parents, and I am unemployed. I'm sort of an instinctive miser, so I've got a comfortable bit of cash set aside that can support my needs for a while. All things considered, I've got it pretty nice right now, but I'm still worried.

There's so much emphasis on the economy recently that it's frighteningly easy to forget that election on the horizon. Choosing between Obama and McCain is a bit of intellectual masturbation--a pursuit of self-satisfaction, but this time built upon the campaign-trail platitudes that pollute the whole process. Obama is so far to the left that, if he gets his way, we'll edge perilously close to a socialist state. McCain is far enough from the right that his victory wouldn't quite be a loss for the democrats. So what are we debating? Party lines.

The race card will inevitably be a topic for the pundits, but I don't think it'll be much of a legitimate issue. This is going to be just like every other election. Some 35%-40% of the population will deign to cast a vote (maybe more if the youth vote can finally be mobilized), maybe 40% of those will be educated enough to make a reliable decision, the rest will vote for an elephant or a donkey simply because they are an elephant or a donkey, and we'll magically get a new Commander-in-Chief.

On principle, I’m concerned that we are still largely bound to party lines. Ideas on the scale of a presidential election are so huge and nuanced that they deserve deeper consideration than we often give. Obama has lots of support because he gives a hell of a speech, is a handsome man, and advocates policies that appeal to the helper in all of us. But where's the substance? He's got multi-step plans to solve all the world's ills. Let me know the first two steps, just so I can have some assurance that there's at least an idea behind the rhetoric. The big mover though, is universal health care (I'll try and skip over the damned-near-offensive ads Obama has running that uses his mother's death as if it's a poker chip for another post). Everyone deserves to be healthy. Everyone deserves equal access to qualified doctors. Everyone should pitch in to help the have-nots with their problems, be they structural or self-inflicted. On some level, that all makes sense. I agree with the sentiment. I personally believe that we all have a moral obligation to extend whatever aid we can to those who cannot sustain themselves (I'll also leave the topic of the billions of dollars donated overseas when millions of our own citizens wallow in nothingness stateside for another post), but that's just the point: it's a moral obligation.

It is not, nor should it ever be, the State's responsibility to declare my morals. The obligation of supporting those less fortunate falls on individuals, communities, places of worship, and maybe states—Notably not the federal government. Most pertinent now is the minor issue of funding such a plan. We are at war. Social Security is dying. The economy is limping along. And we've committed ourselves to almost a trillion dollar expenditure (that's $1,000,000,000,000) to bail out this mortgaging debacle. Where, pray tell, will the money for universal health care come from? Raising taxes is the obvious answer; it also happens to send us right down the road toward socialism.

As a country, we like to live just within our means. Raising taxes means less spending money, which means some people will be less able to cover their living expenses, which means more banking problems, which means more people defaulting to the new universal health care system, which means fewer people actually funding the thing, which means an even deeper economic crisis.

Good times, eh?

There are bigger fish to fry than the warm-and-fuzzy sound bites Obama has built his campaign upon and McCain seems to realize this. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a particular McCain supporter, but he does seem to have a deeper grasp on just what this war means and how important it is. If Obama is a wide-eyed, optimistic puppy dog, then McCain is a grizzly bear: tough to look at and terrifying, but still deserving respect. Everyone would rather have a puppy in their homes, but right now we need a more intimidating figurehead.

Obama has so saturated the airwaves with memorable ads and delivers such great speeches that McCain almost gets lost in the fold. For what it's worth, I'd rather have McCain in office for the next four years than Obama, but not necessarily because of politics, but because of what I see as their priorities.

We are living in difficult times right now. The market will most likely recover in time. The wars will end in time. But what we need is time. More to the point, we don't need change. The status quo we grew used to may be untenable now, but that is not call to change the parameters. We need to focus on getting back to center, even if it's on a lower rung than before, before we start making too many adjustments.

Innumerable people have been on TV pleading the public to go and vote. The subtext being to vote for "Change," but I want us all to vote for the people in whom we place the greatest confidence to do what is needed right now, even if doing so means sacrificing what could or even should be. We all need to vote for the right people, for the right reasons, not for a mascot.