Politics

Unlike UG ("the appearance of a winner makes a winner" Really? Is that all there is to it? Have we become this superficial? Does appearance and demeanor trump all? I think you may be right!) or Xmastime ("Obama's alarmingly easy to look at"), I don't have a man crush on Barack Obama. When I saw him speak in Hoboken on behalf of Bob Menendez during his Senate race, I walked away mid-speech, unimpressed. He was so mannered and polished (pundits and the press prefer to say "cool" and "calm") that I wondered if he creaked when he walked, so well-rehearsed in delivering the Democratic platitudes, that it was actually off-putting (even before his recent Oprah-style campaign ad, he reminded me of an infomercial pitchman). I was hoping for something different and all I saw was more of the same (another Bill Clinton disciple, and by that I mean a Democrat who talks about tax cuts and steers just enough to the right to get elected). And when Obama opted out of public campaign financing as the money began to roll in and figured he could outspend his opponent by a huge margin, he revealed himself not as a man of principle, but as a typical opportunistic politician, a camera-friendly alternative to the grating Hillary Clinton, whose timing couldn't have been better.

Before you get the wrong idea, I probably should have prefaced these remarks by saying that I think the country will be better off whoever is elected on Tuesday. As the most moderate Republican nominated in my lifetime, I don't see McCain as the bogeyman that the hyperbolic media is now making him out to be (remember when Reagan's election was supposed to usher in World War III?). McCain's affiliation with the same political party of the current president has been an albatross that even the most liberal of Republicans hasn't been able to shake. I could almost feel sorry for the guy, but then I remember that he is also an opportunistic politician (I have to admit that a part of me hopes he wins just to prove all the worthless political gasbags wrong--that would be almost as entertaining as when the Giants proved all the worthless sports gasbags wrong).

Which brings me to my main point: I have never been inspired by, admired, or respected a living politician in my entire life. Not one. Could this be because I'm from New Jersey and currently reside in one of the most politically corrupt counties to ever exist (all Democrats, btw)? Perhaps. If man is born to fail (and how could it be otherwise), I believe he fails most spectacularly in politics. Look around. Read your history. Everywhere ruination. In what other human endeavor (that doesn't involve a supernatural being) has so much been promised and so little delivered?