A public answer to a private question

Why do I seldom comment on the various presidential candidates? Good question with several answers.

First and foremost, at the risk of offending readers (including some, obviously, I did not even know I had....), the purpose of this blog first and foremost, is about me. I write about things that amuse me, things that affect me, things that I think about, things that I care about. Sure, I hope to entertain anyone who happens by, and the numerous hopefully humorous posts I throw up are for that purpose, but at root...the writing that goes on here is about whatever comes to mind at any given moment.

The current crop of candidates do not amuse me, they adversely affect me, and as near as I can tell are about as bad a crop as the last election gave us. Let's take a quick run through:

McCain: the good; he did his duty in Vietnam and, when he saw things he disagreed with was willing to speak up about it. the bad; pretty much everything else. He spends so much time researching and discussing and changing his positions I doubt even he knows what they are. Depends on who he is standing in front of.

Clinton: the good; the bad; we saw her efforts for 8 years. they were horrific. we have seen her campaign. horrific. we have seen her integrity, like the way she is (currently) scrambling to disassociate herself from her comments much like Huckabee did with his "saw Dad march in the civil rights" comment. And every bit as disingenuous.

Obama: the good; has some intriguing positions and the potential to represent a major shift in the American paradigm if he were elected; what I mean is, ignoring his politics, policies, and effectiveness, the bottom line is putting a black man in the white house would demonstrate to many negativists that the country as a whole is well past race and into positions even if certain loud mouths with a stake in keeping race as a problem do everything they can to argue otherwise. To be sure there will still be pockets of stupidity but Obama as a symbol alone would be a monumental step forward. the bad; some horrible positions and a distinct lack of honesty. For example, the claims he has never been Muslim? Why, then, did he feel compelled to have the swearing in ceremony on the Koran?

Obviously these are merely touching on the surface issues. But the truth is I have really seen very little in the entire campaign that has interested me. I have seen enough to know that when I step into the booth to vote none of the above will be receiving my vote. I don't waste my vote on "the lesser of two evils", I actually vote for people I believe represent ME.

Do you seriously think McCain, Obama or Clinton represents you or a majority of the things that are important to you? There was an interesting experiment where several co-workers who were debating who they liked better...Obama or Clinton...took one of those "weighted" matrix things where your position and the level of its importance to you showed which candidate most closely matched your interests. Interestingly out of the 6 people who took it...3 Obama, 2 Clinton, and me...the overwhelming leader in being the candidate who most closely matched was Ron Paul. For 4 people. Mike Huckabee also got one. And remember, 5 of the 6 people thought they liked Obama or Clinton. That is as far from Paul/Huckabee as you can get and pretty well shows the disconnect between the candidates we get to choose from and the people who we agree with.

And I should vote for the big names why?

In short, I don't write much about the candidates because they do not interest or amuse me. Hope that makes sense to you and you are welcome.