Will Tuesday’s Election Bring Sunshine or Rain?
After all the speeches are given, and all the promises conveyed, if you vote in the presidential election on Tuesday, November 4, and I hope that you do, you will be alone in the voting booth to help determine the course that our country will take in the next four years.
This year’s slate has a curious balance. Regarding one presidential candidate, there are charges of inexperience and liberal thinking, and for the other contender for the office, there seem to be thoughts and worries about longevity, and his potential successor. Both men are great leaders, and both men have given of themselves to the country. Service and patriotism and level of commitment are non-issues for either one of them. Those qualities can be assumed.
Like many other Americans, I have concerns about the emphasis on the Economy by either of them. As far as I know, neither man has a college degree in Economics. Yet, in the last days, this has become the major focal point of speeches.
As the candidates have flipped from issue to issue, in a soup du jour kind of a way, the election has seemed disjointed at times, with wild promises to spend more money than should be spent, coupled with an added commitment to cut taxes. There has not been any emphasis on just how we got into this pickle in the first place.
Obama seems to have a Robin Hood kind of plan. In taking more in taxes from the very rich, he can level the playing field a little more. That will allow a tax break for the middle class citizens who have made the rich, “rich,” in the first place.
In a town hall meeting in Peterborough, New Hampshire tonight, McCain stated that his priority was to finish the wall between Mexico and the United States and that “some” of the people (in Mexico) are “good people.” He offered to “incentivize” businesses who provide “green technology” to private homes and businesses, to fix all the government buildings, so that they are in line with “green” thinking, and to grant more money to students who are seeking higher education.
Campaign promises always seem to be forgotten, once anyone attains the office they seek. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study of broken campaign promises.
On the face of it, it seems that we are in a state of “Promise her anything, but give her Arpege.”
This weekend, many people in other states have tried to vote in pre-elections. Some have stood for hours, until they could stand in line no more, without food, drink, and a place to sit down. If you are in your 80s, you’d have a hard time holding out, too. Some elderly people just gave up after waiting more than two hours and being told that the wait would require at least three more hours.
On Tuesday, I doubt that the lines in New Hampshire will be too long. However, I plan to go prepared with everything I need to wait in line, if that means a thermos of coffee, folding chairs, a winter coat and scarf, an umbrella, snacks, and a good book. We are determined people, in New Hampshire. I, for one, do not want “four more years … ” It is, America, indeed, “time for a change.”
Anyone out there making any political quilts?
There you have it, and that is how it looks from this corner of cyberspace. Patricia Cummings, reporting from Concord, New Hampshire, home state of the first primary election in the nation.
