Blow Up The TV! Throw Away The Paper!

I have come to a decision that many of you (including myself) are not going to believe. I no longer care about the 2008 Presidential race. Really. In the foreseeable future I am going to conscientiously tune out all of the rhetoric, spin and propaganda.

The mental turmoil that has been slowly building within me has reached the point that I simply have to throw in the towel. How the the nomination process works, since I live in Kentucky, makes my vote and voice worth less than a city-wide straw poll in Iowa or New Hampshire.

You have to understand that I haven't reached this point because I don't care about the world, my country or even politics in general. In fact, it is because I care about those things too much that I have decided to tune out. It all started with an online calculator. This calculator asks whether you support various issues and the level of importance that you place upon each issue. Your results are then compared to the various presidential candidates' stances and you are given the candidate that most matches your beliefs. It was a foregone conclusion that I should be supporting one of the "extreme" candidates that has no real shot at the nomination, much less the actual Presidency. As predicted, when I got the results back it showed that I should be supporting Dennis Kucinich with a 93.10% match.

How does that lead to me no longer giving a shit about the presidential race? You see, I am becoming more and more worried about the direction we are headed as a country and it is becoming abundantly clear that I can't do a damn thing about it. Hillary Clinton is looking more and more likely to receive the Democratic nomination. I have several reasons that I can not support Hillary (e.g. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton dynasty where as of TODAY 40% of Americans have never lived without a Bush or a Clinton in the White House) but my primary reason for opposing Hillary is that our country needs healing. George Bush has been one of the most divisive Presidents in our history. Almost half the country loathes the man and this hatred has polarized our political process on all levels. The Attorney General race in Kentucky is an excellent example of how far this partisan polarization has come. The last thing this country needs is four more years of a person in the White House that half the country is going to hate. I don't care that I will be on the other side of the fence this time. This is a road that will lead to a very bleak future.

Because of the above reasons and the strong tendency I have towards pragmatism, I have been supporting Barack Obama. In fact Anna and I attended a fund raiser for Obama here in Lexington.



But I am tired. I am tired of trying to talk people into supporting a candidate that isn't my best match politically. Most of all, I am tired of the fact that even if I do convince them, it won't amount to a hill of beans. By the time we in Kentucky get to vote on a nominee, the process is over for all practical purposes. Whomever has won the earlier states has enough delegates to secure the nomination.

This isn't all. In the spirit of "Blog Action Day", none of the candidates (including Kucinich) has taken Al Gore up on his challenge to make Global Warming a top priority issue. This issue has to be addressed today, not tomorrow. And my party isn't giving the issue more than token air time.

So I am quitting. I am going to concentrate on getting the city council to install speed bumps on my street. I am going to become active in my neighborhood association. I am going to press my local officials on keeping their promises about proposed neighborhood centers. But I am going to quit caring on whom becomes president because I just can't take it anymore. I will vote in the primary and general election and hope like hell that our President isn't Fred Thompson, but if it is...oh well.

If you are interested in taking the candidate calculator that I spoke of earlier, here is the link. And, old habits die hard, so if you do take the test, would you be so kind to post the results in the comments section. I may not care, but I am curious.

Update!!

My vacation from caring about Presidential politics lasted a whole 24 hours. As many of you are aware, Stephen Colbert has thrown his hat in the ring for the 2008 election. This is really exciting news. Mainly because I think Colbert's candidacy is going to offer an excellent contrast to the other candidates by showing how little difference exists between his absurd parody of political rhetoric and the actual political rhetoric espoused by the "real" candidates.

In fact, I feel so strong that his candidacy is a good thing for the country that I have written him a letter offering my services in order to get his name on the ballot in Kentucky. I suggested that his message in Kentucky should be that since Kentucky's primary election is so late in the cycle, you might as well for vote for Colbert because nobody in the nation gives a shit who wins here.