Choices

If there were justice in the world, Newt Gingrich would would have been mated up with Herman Cain to create Rick Perry's ideal running mate, and the Texan would be leading in the polls right now.  That, I think, would have made the ideal Saturday Night Live season possible.  But there is no justice.  Gingrich and Cain remain unspliced and Perry is pretty much out of the race. 

It's down to Romney and the Newt for all intents and purposes, and the fun is slowly leaving this race, to be replaced by the scary.  Gingrich may be the most scandalous man alive.  He's steeped in ethics violations, marital infidelity, lies, and scams.  I still can't really believe he's a contender here, but I'm hoping he can stay alive through a long primary season and become the republican nominee if only because it's what the Republican base deserves.  People who cheer speeches about the death penalty and child labor are getting, in Gingrich, exactly what they asked for.  He is as slimy as they come.

Romney is somewhat less exciting than toast.  He is a politician of convenience with, it seems, no vision for the future of America, and no hope of rousing anyone into paroxysms of pride.  He is a business man, and perhaps America has become a nation of business men, of risk averse, cautious, middle aged white men who wear sweaters.  If that's so, we deserve Romney too.  He will, I'm quite sure, lead us steadfastly into irrelevance. 

I've had a lot of conversations with people recently about President Obama.  Personally, I'm a fan.  No, he hasn't done crap on the environment, but other than that, I think he's been pretty effective at bringing about the kind of change he promised in his campaign.  He got a health care bill passed, and it has some pretty good stuff in it.  He's done pretty well on the economy so far.  He hasn't solved all our problems, but he's certainly prevented the kind of wholesale societal breakdown that some of us were predicting when the housing market collapsed.  He's even managed to get rid of don't ask don't tell, which is huge.  He's been steadily working towards  tolerance, acceptance, and increased rights and freedoms for Americans, and all in the face of an incredibly hostile congress.  All things considered, he's certainly earned my vote, but many of the people I've talked to remain unconvinced.

I'd like to point out our options here.  We have choices when it comes to our leaders.  We can't change the fact that virtually all of our politicians are taking money from big corporations in exchange for influence.  We cannot change the fact that there are a lot of voters who are too far gone to make any kind of rational decision about our government (I'm talking about Fox newsers, birthers, and people voting against abortion).  We can, however, vote for people who are working to make the country a better place to live when they come up for reelection.  Your frustration with the current state of our government doesn't change the fact that if you vote for someone besides Obama, we can do no better than an uninspiring, non-threatening, pandering politician.  And, should you choose to vote against Obama, or even not vote, we might end up with a scandal ridden laughing stock of a president whose policies are as scary as anything that comes out of the middle east.

We have a good man as our president right now.  He is perhaps not the greatest man there is, nor even the greatest president we've ever had, but he is a good man and a good president.  There is no excuse for us not to support him, and no hero who will step out of the shadows at the last moment to provide the answers and leadership that will magically and immediately deliver us from our present darkness.

It's time to throw our weight behind Barack Obama.