Ever had to buy something you didn't want to buy?
Let's say the refrigerator goes on the blink. It ends up that replacing it will cost less than repairing it. Wonderful. So what do you do?
Unless you happen to have a passion for kitchen appliances, you probably go shopping for the best deal. Your mission becomes one of getting the most fridge for your money. You probably limit your search to units which have the same features as what you're used to having, or maybe a few more if it doesn't expand the price tag by too much. At the end of the day, you look at all of your choices, and keeping in mind that there's really no getting around it, make a selection and pay your money.
This is precisely the choice I'm being presented as a voter in the November elections.
Our current president is past his freshness date. There's no getting around it, we have to elect a new one. The Constitution says so.
Unlike kitchen appliances, I do happen to have some passion for politics. The trouble is, all of the attractive choices seem to be off the table now.
Ultimately, I think Fred Thompson would have been our best bet. For reasons known only to him, he didn't run a campaign that really had a chance of success. He was basically finished before he started. It's too bad.
With the Republican nomination all but sewn up by McCain, the only thing left worth wondering about is his choice for Vice President.
On the Democrat side, Hillary and Barack Obama are still slugging it out. It looks like it will be awhile before it gets settled. One hopes that the Democrats come to their senses and realize we have already seen what a Clinton presidency looks like, and cast their lot with Obama.
So the only two realistic choices if this were to come to pass would be between McCain and Obama. Ron Paul is somehow keeping the dollars flowing in, perhaps because his devotees expect that he'll run as a third party candidate when he fails to get the nomination. But if you watch Mr. Paul speak, he fails in one extremely important regard: he doesn't sound presidential. It's a quirk of his voice and vocal patterns. It's also a product of his political standpoint, which as a pundit far more experienced than me compared rather successfully to that of Cindy Sheehan. Honestly, I just don't believe the man stands a chance. And remember, we haven't talked yet about his actual policies.
Ideology aside, he just won't be taken seriously. I think we can count him out.
So that leaves me, the American voter, with a refrigerator-style choice to make. And I am most assuredly NOT a kitchen appliance aficionado.
What to do? I've been sternly reminded that regardless of how distasteful the choice might be, I am obliged to cast a vote. I guess sitting out probably is kind of dumb.
If you consider that the Republicans have utterly failed to deliver a candidate that aligns well with my political standpoint, I'm quite sure they're not gonna care much if I put their candidate on an even footing with that of the competition. Honestly, if it really mattered that much to them, they wouldn't have made such a mess of domestic policy since 2000. Obviously, they've bought into the same vein of American-style socialism that the Democrats have been pushing since the days of FDR.
So as a voter, I get to choose between the model with the crummy open-the-freezer-door ice maker I don't like, or the one without the gallon jug storage in the door. Exciting, huh?
If the Democrat nominee turns out to be Hillary Clinton, I'm pretty sure my choice is made for me. I won't cast a vote for her. Any fridge is better than the one that can't be trusted to actually be a fridge. If Hillary was a refrigerator, I believe she'd wait until 3AM and suddenly and quietly go on "heat cycle" and spoil all your food, then chill back down so you'd eat botulism for breakfast.
But if they run Obama, the only realistic thing to do is to go between his and McCain's web sites and see which one gives me the most stuff for my vote. Just like you'd check to see if both fridges had a self-defrosting feature.
I daresay that there isn't a hell of a lot of difference between the two men as candidates, with the possible exception of their policy in Iraq. And you know what? That issue has gotten so muddy that I don't know anymore what the right thing to do is. Somewhere in between staying in there and kicking every ass in sight versus pulling out a brigade a month is going to be the reality, probably regardless of whether we elect either of these two, or one of the dog turds lying in my back yard. In other words, it probably doesn't matter much which guy ends up in office; the military situation has taken on a life and mind of its own and the President only nominally has control.
Since the Republicans obviously don't feel like they owe me any loyalty, I don't feel like I owe them any, either.
So I'm left looking for the best deal out of two bad choices.
I might just vote Obama. And I'm not just speaking metaphorically.
