When do I get to vote?

My wife has gotten interested in politics of late. It may be the fact that she is a grandmother now and worries a little more about what we are leaving for our grandchildren. After all, every politician decries the misery of the mountainous debt we are leaving our grandchildren, even though none of them is really in favor of doing anything about it.

What ever the reason for her conversion, I am grateful, for I am a political junkie! I watch all the talking heads on TV. Heaven forbid that I miss "Meet The Press", or "This Week" on Sunday morning. At any rate today the Republicans held a debate in Iowa on a special addition of "This Week With George Stephapolis". All nine candidates lined up to tell us their positions on various matters. Mostly it was about how any of them would be better for us than than any of the democrats.

In the interest of open disclosure here, I must say that I agree, but that is a rant for another day. At any rate Barb and I watched together, and she commented when it was over that some of those folks had really interesting ideas for the future. I had to explain to her that non of those folks had a prayer of being the nominee. But I don't understand she said, they have the same chance as anyone else. I will vote for them and so will a lot of other people once they hear what they have to say.

That is when I had to break the news to her that she really did not get to vote! I explained it as follows:


The process starts with anyone in this great country having the right to run to be elected for the Office of President. Doesn't that sound great. Wait a minute not that easy, lets go through the process. First you have to already be a politician. It is not a rule, but if you aren't, everybody says you don't have enough experience. So somebody like say Bill Gates or Warren Buffet would not qualify. That's OK with me, no use to temp good men to go to the dark side. Beside those guys, and folks like them, acutally generate a lot of wealth for a lot of people. Better to leave those guys alone.

Secondly you have to raise a lot of money. For President now it is at least $100 Mil. just to get the nomination of your party. (Once you get that far the tax payers take over most of the tab.)

Now where do you spend that money? Well everybody knows if you want to be the nominee for your party, you have to win the early primaries of Iowa and New Hampshire. You will do anything, say anything, and spend whatever it takes to win those 2 states. Makes it real easy to understand why we "need" ethanol to go in our cars even though it costs way more than oil and is not very efficient. They grow a lot of corn in Iowa.

Now the real problem is we don't really want change! We want the status quo in a prettier package. So the guy with the new ideas stirs a little something in us, but in the end he or she makes us just a little uncomfortable, and we do not like uncomfortable. There is also a good chance that they are against ethanol, and that stance won't get you many votes in Iowa.

At any rate by the time the first 2 primaries are over it is usually pretty much decided. If it is close maybe South Carolina come into to play, but for the rest of us - - forget about it.

I finally explained to her that the best way for us to have an impact on choosing a candidate, was for us to send money to the candidate we liked so that he or she could spend that money on TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire so that those folks could see what we saw and vote for the right person. Sounds simple doesn't it.

By the way I checked it out, the number one industry in New Hampshire - -you guessed it tourism. Don't be surprised if some politician doesn't suggest there be a law that says we all have to take our vacation there in a car powered by ethanol no less!

Maybe we should just let those folks get together and decide who the president should be as well. At least then we would have somebody to blame no matter how it comes out!

At least this week I did not have to hear any more politicians on TV talking about how awful the Iraq Parliament is for taking the month of August off. Why you ask, well because all of our leaders are on vacation this month. Hey, ease up, those folks in Iraq got real problems to deal with. Here of course everything is perfect.

Next time I will take on the water and school board! That is really where it all starts.