The election of course still has yet to be decided, depending on the results of the electorate and what if any court challenges stem out of the respective candidates campaign’s or parties.
I am disappointed with the potential results and the election as a whole. I feel as the main two news outlets FOX and CNN and their respective affiliates were each to one sided and slanted in an obviously biased way towards the Republican candidate (FOX) and the Democratic candidate (CNN). Like wise Newspapers who endorsed Obama were slanted and biased in their reporting, Newspapers that endorsed McCain were slanted and biased in theirs.
Who ever wins I think the press and media have lost as both those on the right and left see multiple problems with how those two main media outlets and their affiliates report both the candidates, and issues, as well as their editorials and commentary.
Personally I am saddened and worried for the nation as this election reminds of Jimmy Carter versus Ronald Reagan in 1976. People were discouraged with the Republican Party and Politics in whole on the heels of Watergate and its aftermath. Jimmy Carter a little known Democratic Governor much like Barrack Obama a little known first term U.S. Senator, managed to take the nation by storm and surprise as the candidate standing for change of the political system, change for the country, through his grassroots campaigning and personable appeal, much like Barrack Obama’s appeal.
Yet Carter turned out to be a horrible President, inflation spiraled, industry and the economy became crippled and America and its prestige fell to an all time low as the entire staff of our Iranian Embassy was taken hostage for over a year. It was without a doubt a failed Presidency, though former President Carter as gone on to do many notable charitable works that have largely redeemed him.
Amazingly the man he defeated Ronald Regan who was rejected for being just more of the same old Washington establishment when he ran against Carter, turned out 4 years later to be one of the greatest and most effective Presidents we ever had and left office with an amazing 67% approval rating, one of the highest ever, after he successfully managed to unite both Democrats (Regan Democrats) and Republicans to first restore our international prestige by immediately securing the release of the long held hostages in Iran. He managed to unite Americans on tightening their belts and bearing with him in a step of initiatives that he said would make things seem a bit worse at first economically but if we stayed the course that it would turn around through hard work and sacrifice. He didn’t offer any feel good solutions and promises of immediate betterment like Barrack Obama and Carter did, or suggested wealth simply be redistributed. Instead he went on TV and told people up front and honestly, the state of the union is poor, and there is no easy or quick way out, but that he had a plan that would revitalize industry and the economy, and to give him and that plan a chance. It did, and two years later most of the slide that occurred during Carter’s inexperienced but well intentioned desire to be President was overcome through Regan’s new policies and the hard work of Americans who were told that it is going to be hard and take hard work. He didn’t blame those past failures on anyone, he instead concentrated on the real nuts and bolts or realistic and logistically feasible efforts to lead us to a new age and cycle of prosperity. It worked, we worked, we sacrificed through that work and extra effort, and things for the nation did become truly prosperous.
Regan when he ran against Carter would have been a much better man for the job. History has taught us that. Yet when Regan ran against Carter, being the Republican after Nixon, he was branded as four more years of corrupt politics. Nixon was from California and had long been a friend to Regan who was the long time California Governor.
People ignorantly refused to give Ronald Regan that chance, they first had to see for themselves, that just being affable, and just having promises, and not having the real understanding or experience in how to work with a diverse world, government and populace isn’t the logistical formula for success.
Ronald Regan truly was no Richard Nixon and when he got his chance he showed he was no Jimmy Carter either, but head and shoulders above him, in every important way.
I can’t help but feel America is repeating the Carter versus Regan mistake. I can’t help but feel they are repeating it worth as Obama has even less experience at governing and legislating and leading than Carter had as a governor of Georgia. For every unworkable idea Carter had, Obama seems to have 3 unworkable ideas instead. For every unfulfilled and wishful promise Carter made because of those unworkable ideas, Obama seems to have three in turn that likely can’t be fulfilled with a broke treasury, two foreign wars, and a World Wide Financial crisis.
Jimmy Carter was a decent man, Christian and moral and loving and kind, but he failed to see the complexities of the world and our nation and rise to the challenges of true and effective leadership. I think he made his promises believing he could fulfill them, even though it was naïve.
I fear Obama is not naïve like Carter, nor quite as decent, or Christian or moral in his approach. I feel like he has at times misled the people in his simplistic views of the problems in the world, and his fantastic claims that he despite failing in previous governmental elected positions can achieve these promises if given the Presidency.
I feel a media that has lost its journalistic integrity in favor of commercialism has colluded in a detrimental way to that end.
I feel like with Carter, the love affair will be short lived, the cost of that love painful and near ruinous.
The parallels are obvious, people, young people, idealists in general weren’t so much voting for Carter but for the idea that real change was something virtuous and worthy of championing.
I think far too many people are likewise voting for Obama because of their ideals that see the world as the often unfair and unjust place, humans not Presidents make it. That they are voting for him because they are voting for change, just like Carter promised change.
Yet the French have an old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Electing a little known and inexperienced man to lead the nation, full of wonderful but vague promises, has historically always resulted in things not just staying the same, but becoming worse, as micromanagement and poor logistical understanding and attempting to grow government in scope, size and authority just creates a never ending cycle of too many chiefs and not enough Indians, working at cross purposes, working at cross purposes with poorly planned goals, and poorly provided means to achieve them.
I understand why so many people have voted for change.
I understand why so many people who have will also quite likely end up bitterly disappointed that they didn’t spend more time researching independently instead of through biased media outlets or even more biased party, candidate, and special interest cause oriented web sites that tailor superficial reasons to vote and believe in a candidate while obscuring the far deeper complexities of the issues they claim to be championing and able to reform.
Ultimately we all loose when we vote for Change, and simply accept the man who promises it, by identifying with our desire for change, with out casting a more critical eye as to his capabilities and motivations and the logistical soundness of the promise.
Ultimately all Presidents no matter how change oriented they are or not run up against another important brick wall on the path to often what is stupidity and shortsightedness.
It’s called the Supreme Court and those nine, not elected, but appointed for life Justices are in fact the supreme power, and arbiters of to what extent change can or can happen.
I lament more than any other thing that so much of the Change Mr. Obama seems to be promising is simply unconstitutional as well as economically and logistically and politically unfeasible. That when it does get to those nine, wiser, more learned, and studied men and women, who are in fact the keepers of the faith in our established way of life and constitution that so many of those things would be struck down.
I think it’s irresponsible and misleading to tempt people with that kind of impossible change, where there is no way to pay for it, no way to implement it, no way to run it as a successful mechanism based on working and workable logistics that on top of it all is likely illegal because of how it widely the concept itself strays from the constitution.
I guess every generation has to learn the hard way why it is so often said if you aren’t a democrat when you are young and full of ideals there is something wrong with you, and if you aren’t a Republican when you are old and have learned all of life’s hard lessons regarding ideals versus logistical pragmatism there is something wrong with you too.
Regan didn’t promise things would get better, he promised if we had a good plan that would work, and he swore his would and exactly how it would work, and we all worked hard and sacrificed and understood it would take some time that things could get better.
That was a pretty big difference and a pretty big difference in results.
I fear we now have another misled and poorly informed populace that believe simply redistributing some wealth and adding some more social programs and placing more oversight on business will all lead to some instant change. That it gets better just by making that vote for change.
History shows it changes alright. Jimmy Carter proved that, which it actually changes for the worse not the better.
Everyone wants to reinvent the wheel and make it better. Thousands of years no one ever has.
Yet we today as Americans do have a chance to make one thing better in our futures as we look towards the historical first moments when we may finally overcome ethnology through this election, and the results of how people accept the election.
Like with Carter people to the left feared Regan as just being another corrupt Republican Fat Cat politician. People on the left viewed him with that rigid stereo type and oh did they turn out to be wrong to their eventual delight.
Today people on the left fear the election might be stolen, that it is what they believe people on the right do.
People on the right believe that it is being stolen by the people on the left through wildly exaggerated promises of what they can do and what they can achieve.
Blacks fear whites as wanting to deny them equal power and esteem and will stop at nothing to perpetuate a system they want to believe does not favor them.
Whites fear blacks intent on exploiting a political gain, they fear many will see as personally being theirs will use that to encourage one another to threaten their way of life and systems they imagine are favorable to all and not just them.
Neither Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain might bake the best of Presidents, but which ever one does become President we can nonetheless win by seeing this historic and true opportunity to overcome our racial, and tribal, communal fears of those who seem different through skin color, or ancestry, or the communities they often dwell exclusively in that celebrate and cater to those things.
Fear will be palpable based on dated and incomplete perceptions of one another and the suspicion and recriminations that often flow along with those things.
Yet fears are almost always imagined, and objections are almost always simply a request for more information.
Each and everyone of us as a chance to achieve something greater than anyone politician in the days ahead by learning that, and like Regan asked to pitch in and make that sacrifice, to work harder to share that information about why a person, a race, a tribe, a community can be trusted and means no harm and really just wants to contribute it’s equal and fair share. That just because differences in many matters of personal choice remain, from the foods that we eat, to the things that entertain us, to the ways that we worship or don’t, to the clothes that we wear, to the things we most value, doesn’t represent a threat to anyone who thinks differently, that there is no desire to infringe or impose or be more right, or better, just a desire to create a world where we can all enjoy and live better.
Think globally, act locally, and hopefully when all is said and done people will find it in them to not make it about two personalities, or two parties, or two cultures, but will make it about how they and by extension we all can contribute to making that universal dream of change for the better come true. Not by just empowering one man, or one party, but empowering ourselves and each other to make it so.
