Argh!

I don’t know how I’ve become so political in the last couple of elections. When I was younger, I rarely paid attention to the details. I voted, usually, but would often just tick off the names I recognized, without really paying any attention to what they may have said or what their goals were.

For the most part, we Americans just live our lives, and it really doesn’t matter who is running the country. We have a unique constitution with a bill of rights that gives us a level of freedom that is rarely enjoyed by other world citizens, and our system of government contains a set of checks and balances so that no matter what ideology is sitting at the top of the heap, it usually all works out to something in the middle by the time it trickles down to affect any common citizen.

The current election is so very frustrating. On the one hand, we have a young and vibrant Barrack Obama, an electrifying speaker, who took over the Presidency nearly four years ago from George W. Bush.

How can people forget, in a mere four short years, what a mess he inherited? We’ve been fighting two wars for a decade. The United States was seen around the world as a bully with a big stick, respecting no one, and the economy had collapsed into a state like nothing since the great depression of the 1930’s.

None of the above was anything new that started after the election of 2008 – these were all pre-existing conditions. Just as you cannot turn a battleship on a dime, you cannot turn a country around in just a year or two. What do people expect? No one can work miracles, no matter their political affiliation. When did Americans become so impatient?

The 2008 election was also remarkable because of the relatively low profile that the religious right maintained. Previous to 2008, there was always some self righteous preacher who was up in arms about something, and both political parties would do some sort of song and dance trying to appease the bible-belt church goers, while at the same time not appearing to the rest of the voting public as a right-wing lunatic. The 2008 elections heard little from the religious right, and it was refreshing.

The past four years have seen remarkable strides in visibility and recognition of equal rights for gay Americans. While things have been getting better for a long time, mostly in small localized areas and big cities; since 2008 we’ve seen a national move forward, and a vast sea change in how the public perceives their gay neighbors.

We’ve also seen the emergence of the Tea Party branch of the Republicans – not necessarily religious, but definitely on the right fringe of the party. Many of this group are calling for rollback in social programs, reduction of taxes, smaller government – all things that are not necessarily bad things, if done surgically and with a great deal of thought as to the impact.

And, we’ve seen a resurgence from the religious right, again with politicians doing this crazy dance of trying to appeal to everyone at the same time. The story hasn’t changed, but it is apparent that this new religious right is gaining some ground, particularly in regard to women’s rights. Some states have now passed laws that restrict the ability of a woman to get an abortion, and while no state has yet passed it, we are seeing more attempts to get laws on the books that declare a fetus as a person from the moment of conception.

The state of Wisconsin even managed to repeal a law that guaranteed equal pay for women, which was signed by their new Governor, who then went on to survive a recall petition. What are people thinking? C’mon, lets everyone pee in our own cereal.

On our other hand, the Republicans have all fallen in line behind Mitt Romney as the man they think should be president. The scary thing is that there are so many blue-collar, lower-middle-class people who now believe that Romney is the answer to all of our problems that he might actually carry off the election. Woe be unto us should this occur. You think the Bush years were terrible? Just wait.

I’m not anti-Republican. I’m not so leftist that I’m unreasonable. I’m willing to listen to all the sides and make a reasonable choice. I like to think that I’m neither red, nor blue – more purplish – in the middle on most things.

The problem is, that we aren’t hearing anything from the Romney camp except “vote for me, I’m not Barrack Obama.”. If you watch the TV advertisements put out by or on behalf of Romney, you’ll notice that they are nothing but rhetoric. They are full of (mostly false) claims about what the current president has or hasn’t done, but not a damned one of them contain any alternative proposal on what he would do differently.

The Obama side isn’t much better, they put out a slew of their own negativity, but at least they are also stating what they have done and what is different, and what he wants to continue doing. If you stop long enough to actually look at the numbers, you’ll see that they are gradually becoming better. More people are going back to work, more jobs are being created, houses are beginning to sell in many areas of the country – we are in a gradual state of recovery.

One of the things about Romney that so many Americans completely fail to understand is that the man is extremely wealthy, has zero empathy to the masses, and because of his business background, he would be the worst thing we could do to the country right now.

I consider myself a very lucky person. Despite the fact that I’ve no college, I have managed to work my way up in a growing company, make a great salary, with some of those “Cadillac” benefits we read about. Because I started with the company when it was very small, I’ve a personal relationship with some of the “big wigs” at the top.

These people are phenomenally wealthy – just like Mitt Romney.  And, while they are basically “nice” people, every single one of them would not blink an eye if it came to laying me off if they thought it would improve the bottom line of the company.

Every single one of these very wealthy and important people who I’ve worked with for most of 20 years would think absolutely nothing of my personal circumstances if they decided my job could be done better and cheaper by someone in one of our overseas branch offices.

I’ve been to these people’s homes, know their children, have spoken to them on a daily basis for most of two decades. They live in a world where they have three nannies to watch their children. Those children go to only the best private schools. Their families travel around the world on our company jets as a perk.

These people make 100 or even 200 times more than the average employee, and simply cannot understand the lives that normal people lead. I’ve seen the paychecks of some of these people – a single paycheck covering one pay period for some of these people is more than what some of us make in an entire year – on which we support our multi-person families. How can someone who takes home $35,000 in a single paycheck be empathetic to the girl in accounts payable who is supporting newborn twins on that amount of money or less for a whole year?

How can someone who has acknowledged they are worth $250 million or more (we are now finding out about his offshore accounts he hasn’t included in these numbers), who vacations at his private resort on his private lake be empathetic towards a single mom who has been unemployed for six months and is about to lose the house?

Mitt Romney is probably seen as a ‘nice’ guy by his family and his close friends. I’m sure he thinks he is a nice guy. But I guarantee you that he will look at running this company just like he ran companies when he was at Bain Capital. He will do whatever makes the most sense for the bottom line, and will have absolutely no thoughts at all about what those decisions mean for the lives of the people involved. He’ll likely not even understand those decisions will shatter people’s lives, or he’ll suggest that people can just go do something else.

I have no idea why the man wants to be President, except that it must be just something to salve his ego, like a trophy head mounted on a wall. Or, perhaps it’s some secret plan involving the Mormon church. Yeah, silly. But, I don’t think the man wants to be President because he thinks it is his duty.

I’m not so sure that many Americans know what they really want. Whenever things aren’t going good for them, they see “change” as the answer, and Isuppose it is only human nature. Change, for the sake of change, is not always the best answer. Sometimes we just need to be like the slow freighter on its lonely way across the sea. A steady hand at the tiller, with the engine telegraph set to steady ahead. Eventually, we arrive at the destination.

What is most striking about Mr. Romney are the contortions he’s going through currently in trying to distance himself from the Health Care law he signed into being as governor of Massachusetts. This law, which he touted as a good law, benefiting all citizens of the state, served as a model for the law we now have nationally, and which was just declared as constitutional by the Supreme Court.

Why just this past week Mr. Romney has changed his mind at least twice on what he thinks about these two laws. The Massachusetts Department of Revenue website states that residents who cannot provide proof of health insurance when they file their taxes must pay a penalty through their tax returns. Mr. Romney cannot make up his mind whether he wants to agree and call the national mandate a penalty, or a tax and has flip-flopped on it several times.

That is what is scary about this man. He apparently has no strong opinions of his own on which we can count. How he feels on any particular issue depends either on the audience he is addressing at the moment, or which group he is trying to please. He will change his opinion to suit his audience, and he does it brazenly and openly and because of his arrogance, thinks that we don’t notice or don’t care – that our displeasure with Mr. Obama will be enough to carry him through November.

I’d rather stick with the known than put an arrogant, wealthy man in the White House, who simply isn’t the right man for us this time around.