Exactly - This IS Important

Image Credit: Seattle Municipal (Flickr)

Apolologies in advance for making most of this post out of someone else's words. I wish I were so eloquent as Anna Quindlen. I can only urge you to read this article she wrote about the Presidential election. The point of the piece is that we're not getting enough substance out of the candidates or the media and we deserve and need that.

If you don't have the time or inclination, here's a bit or three to ponder:

"Both [McCain] and Senator Obama need to provide detailed and incisive answers, not rote snippets from their stump speeces. Perhaps this is the race in which voters will not be charmed by affect or riposites. After all, eight years ago, the American peopple embraced a good ole boy at the polls and wound up with a man neither insightful nor intellectual enough to manage the nation."

...

"It can't possibly be that we've become so insecure about our power, our primacy, our plce in the world that we can't bear a person who stands on principle. It can't really be that America has become a nation so small-minded that intellect must belittled. It can't really be about likability, can it? I don't need the president to be my friend. I have friends. What I need is someone to clean up the mess George W. Bush has made of the country I love."

...

"Here is the only thing about anyone's kids that matters now: every time you vote you make your kids a promise. It's a promise that you will look past cheap slogans and lazy alliances to try to find a way to make America worthy of a new generation."


Amen sister. Although I don't consider myself very patriotic and although I've made my choice already based on my research about the candidates professional lives so far, these words touched me. We owe it to our children to vote responsibly and to demand that the candidates give us what we need to make an informed choice. Because the average person won't or can't take the time to find out on his/her own.