The emotion of politics

So many ideas, summations, suppositions, and emotions go through your mind when you think about politics, politicians, political parties, and who it is you want to represent you in the White House.

We all think we have the right ideas, we think to ourselves, “If I were President….”.  But we all don’t have what it takes to actually be President.  The pressures one must endue, the fine lines one must walk, the sometimes heart-wrenching decisions one must make.  It is, to state the obvious, not easy. 

We want someone who agrees with our own morals, our own beliefs, and our own vision of who we are as a country.  We worry about ourselves, our families, our friends, and our soldiers.  We want someone strong but not so strong that they don’t listen to their constituents.

So how do you decide who to back, who to vote for, who you want to be your next President and/or Vice President of the United States of America?   For me, I can only trust my gut.  And when you peel away all the layers of politics, I believe it comes down to your emotional center.

When I watched the Obama/Biden rally on Saturday, August 23, I had tears come to my eyes twice.  It sounds hokey and I know that politics and emotions are not supposed to mix.  But then again neither are church and state but the Republicans cross that line every day.  So if they want to fault me for being emotional about who I want for President, then I would say “Pot, I’d like you meet kettle” (I know, I use that line a lot).

When a politician can bring a sense of pride, or a sense of hope to me, when I am at the lowest point in my life, a time when I don’t believe anyone can really help, I need to take notice of my own emotions.  Barack Obama and Joe Biden are, to me, my new dynamic duo.  Together I do believethey can make the right choices, I believe they will fight for the rights of every American, and I believe they will undo the injustices brought down upon us by the Bush Administration.  I look forward to the day when habeas corpus exists for everybody.  I look forward to the day when illegal wire tapping and illegal search and seizure gets rolled back to before George Bush and Dick Cheney when the U.S. Constitution was still the document by which this country ruled itself. 

In my gut, I know that we have yet to uncover all of the crimes of the Bush Administration and I hope that they all pay for what they have done.  But that is not the single most important thing right now.  Right now, ALL Americans need to be the most proud they have ever been to be Americans.  And then, we need to be the leaders that we once were, the moral compass and the ones the world could depend on to do the right thing.  With Barack and Joe at the helm, I believe we have a fighting chance.  And as I right this, yet another tear comes to my eye.  We are almost home.  I hope to god we get there.

Obama/Biden 2008

I don’t necessarily feel that I need to comment on Joe Biden as a VP running mate but I want to.  I like Joe Biden and have always liked Joe Biden.   He reminds me a lot of myself in that I have strong convictions and sometimes might say something out of line but I mean no harm; I’m just passionate about how I feel.

I am glad the Barack Obama picked somebody who can fight for the both of them.  Let’s face it, Barack is one intelligent, thoughtful guy.  But he doesn’t know how to fight light a street-fighter against some of these political attacks because it is not in his nature.  I think in some ways he is incredulous that politicians behave the way they do and it is as if he freezes up as he is thinking to himself “I don’t understand how or why people behave the way they do” instead of reacting, quickly, like Joe Biden does.

And Joe Biden has served in the Senate longer than John McCain.  He ran for President twice and I think that if Iowa wasn’t always the first to vote in Presidential Primaries, things may have turned out differently.  I’m not saying that Biden would have necessarily won the nomination, but what would have happened if the first caucus or primary was held in Delaware or Maryland or Pennsylvania this year.  It could be that Biden would have won some of those states early on.  Who knows.

But, of all the people mentioned on Baracks short list of candidates, Joe Biden, to me is the one that makes the most sense, and if anything ever happened to Obama where he could not fulfill his term, I would trust Biden to take over and continue Obama’s platform, in good faith, on behalf of the American People.