I am voting for John McCain. If you are too, that’s great. I honestly don’t give a crap who or why you are voting for whomever you are voting for.

I really hate election time. The endless commercials and speeches that the candidates don’t even write is enough to make me puke. Elections are no longer about picking a great leader to lead this country. It really is about who is going to screw me over the least.

And I do mean me, not you or us. I really don’t care what happens to you.

As hard as it may seem to fathom, I am not what you would call a “political junkie.” If it were not for the constant bombardment of TV time that candidates use up, I might or might not know who is running in any particular election.

If they would move the elections in between March madness and the time when baseball season really gets underway, I might be a little less upset with the media time given to the candidates. No, not really.

I know I’m not alone. The Republican National Committee asked the NFL to move the opening Thursday night game up to 7 p.m. to accommodate McCain’s nomination speech. I would have loved to have seen what they would have done if that game went into overtime. They would have told McCain to wait until the game was over or risk a few million people missing it because the game was still on.

I take what most people would call a cynical approach to politics; I tend to think of it more as realistic. In today’s day and age of spin control, winning elections is about choosing the right spin on a few key topics. The key to this move is to be enough in the middle on any or all situations so they can flip-flop on any particular point depending on which group they are trying to get money from on that particular day.

That is what winning elections is all about; whoever can get the most money from the lobbyists with the deep pockets generally wins elections.

And the candidate who has gotten the money from those lobbyists now owes them a favor down the road. Now that favor may be giving a company permission to build a nuclear power plant, or maybe it is for an extension of a government contract.

Whatever it may be, it doesn’t have anything to do with me.

The people it’s really going to affect are the people who gave money to a particular candidate or party in the first place. So until my income bracket increases dramatically and I decide where I want to build my nuclear power plant, this way of electing our leaders does not work for me.

Money makes the world go around. That is an oldie but a goodie, and it’s quite relevant in politics. Don’t let anyone tell you that your vote makes a difference.

Unless you have a lot of money to put the people in office who are going to pass the laws that benefit you, then your vote doesn’t really matter. This holds true nationally all the way down to local elections.

Call me crazy, but it seems like people with a lot of money could just hire themselves politicians to vote their way on certain laws and legislation.

I know at this point you are probably expecting me to give you a quick fix to this problem, but the truth is I don’t think there is one. Everyone in this great country of ours is looking out for number one. No matter whom you are or what you do, if you’re not looking out for your own interests, I can guarantee no one else is either.

Now before some of you get all up in arms trying to tell me that there are people out there that truly do care about what happens to the poor and misfortunate and on and on, I’ll grant you there a lot of great people in this country who do put others before themselves, or at least take the time to help others after they first look out for themselves.

I guarantee you can’t put any politicians in that group. Nothing is more important to a politician than getting elected or staying in office.

I can’t really tell you much on where each candidate stands on different points. And I really don’t care if you do.
I don’t want to hear why you think McCain or Obama is the best man for the job. I don’t want to hear or see the ads from either of them telling me how great they are and what they are going to do for this country. I would be interested in hearing what they are going to do for me.

No taxes and some sort of government slush fund finding its way into my bank account would be nice.

Time will tell if McCain or Obama was the right choice for president. As I have explained my deep respect and admiration for the political system it really only came down to one difference between the two. It is about military service.

I served my country proudly in the United States Marine Corps. There is no truer way to serve your country. McCain is a decorated Vietnam veteran, and Obama chose not to serve. That is as simple as it gets. As far as any other character issues, it is impossible to know either candidate thru campaigning and ads.

Unless you know that person individually, you really can’t talk to their character. Now go out and vote how you want, just don’t tell me whoever you are voting for is really going to make a difference.

Unless, of course, you want to cut me in on the new nuclear power plant you’re building.

By GREG DASSELL
Editor
gdassell@ius.edu