"This is a pull quote."
-- Meriah Doty, USC Adjunct Professor

This is a gallery title


All photography by Joe Shmo

Political Slide Show


All photography by Joe Shmo
"This is a pull quote" Meriah

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The day of the Democratic nomination will be one of the most exciting days of my life;

I can’t wait.

That’s when we can finally start talking about something else.

For months, almost all of the political discussions I’ve engaged in have come down to the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

I know when we have a Democratic nominee, I’ll start talking about John McCain, and whether Republicans will stay loyal to their party or back the more popular candidate.
But since that day is not yet arrived, we have to keep talking about Obama and Clinton, and so in this column, I will.

Irrevocably, their fight is a novel one. It’s a great story that will long outlast either one of them, or their prospective terms in office. It is a story of courage, determination and strength of wit. It is as engaging as any movie I’ve seen recently, but that may be a problem of mine, I’m not sure.

As for the ending, however, I’m not sure the winner will ever be as significant as the battle, in the same way that an amazing book sometimes leaves its reader thinking more about the journey in the middle pages than the book-closing finale.

I haven’t lived through enough presidential elections to be sure, but I have gotten the impression, over the years, that presidential campaigns and platforms do not always mirror exactly what the elected officials do in office.

In other words, I don’t think it’s clear how much the nomination will tell us about what we can expect.

Do I like Obama more than Clinton? Yes. Do I think Obama is a better leader, potentially, than Clinton would be? I do. Would I vote for Obama over Clinton? I would.

But do I think Hillary would be a bad president? I don’t.

She could definitely handle the job and is qualified to do it well.

When you have a fight between two challengers, the dynamic always seems to form that one person must be good and the other must be bad. One choice must be better than the other, but we become so passionate about our beliefs that we turn our backs on the viable alternative, often giving it no credence.

Obama has my Democratic vote, but Clinton still has my confidence.

Here are my issues and frustrations as I think about the future:

When I graduate college, I’ll do so in one of the most unstable job markets we’ve seen in generations. Without a tremendous amount of capitol, it will be very difficult for me to get a reasonable mortgage on a house. I’ll also be paying off debts, hopefully from law school. My annual household income, currently, will be heavily taxed under Obama or Clinton. I am sick of living in a country that is at war overseas.

I do not believe electing Obama over Hillary, or Hillary over Obama, will greatly impact the future of my issues one way or the other. Our country’s needs are very apparent, and any president will have to deal with them and fix them.

Whether Hillary or Obama gets the Democratic nomination, I’m going to stay concerned about these issues until they change. To be honest, what we can expect from either Clinton or Obama is probably difficult, if not impossible, to tell right now.

I am so interested to see what happens either way. The conventional wisdom says the conservatives will come very close to destroying Obama, and I’m not sure that’s wrong, despite how unfair that would be.

So if Obama does, in fact, win the nomination, I’ll just hope the fight stays fair, though it probably won’t.

If Clinton wins the nomination, who I have always believed would be a less challenging candidate to face McCain, I will be anxious to see how she picks herself up from a troubled campaign and learns from her mistakes to fight back and win.

But other than that, I can’t say the nomination will really affect me one way or the other.

I’ll just be excited to talk about something else for once.

1 comment:

Meriah said...

I really like the first person thoughts -- supported by real election issues and facts. 10pts