Light at the end of the Election Tunnel

Light at the End of the Election Tunnel
Culpeper Star Exponent
Oct. 23, 2008
Robert Legge

The Light at the end of the Election Tunnel

I'm so ready for this election to be over with. Presidential election campaigns are too long, too expensive, and too negative and contentious.

I find the campaign speeches I see on TV really weird the way the audience cheers and boos in unison. Sometimes they seem briefly confused about whether to cheer or boo. Is the audience directed with cue cards? Candidates always say "I'll do this" or "I'll do that", and no one seems to care that we have a congress that holds the pursestrings that has to agree with "this" or "that" proposal.

But I can't help but think what a difficult time the eventual winner is going to have given the immense problems facing us. Of course most of the focus has been on the nosediving economy. In fact, Obama's poll numbers rose almost exactly as the Dow Jones sank. McCain's negative ads and rhetoric also hurt him, polls indicate.

But we have a host of other very serious issues that the next president will have to face. These include Iraq, where we will soon be asked to leave whether we're ready or not, Iran (do we really want to bomb their nuclear facilities?), Afghanistan (resurgent Taliban), Georgia (should we let them into NATO?), Latin America with their trend toward anti-Americanism) and even an impending Asian space race where we are largely being left behind.

Domestically we still have a housing crisis, energy crisis, and then there is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid that no one wants to talk about. And with the $trillion bailout, huge deficits loom.

Even though the polls indicate a probable Obama victory, I still predict a very close race with the likelihood of 4 more years of a very divided citizenry. If McCain does pull off an upset, he will surely be faced with a very sour Democratic congress, that will make getting anything substantive done very difficult.

Voters could be facing a case of "careful what you wish for".

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The race for the 7th Congressional District seat between Republican incumbent Eric Cantor and Anita Hartke appears to be another "no contest" for Cantor. It helps that Cantor has a 66-1 fundraising advantage. Cantor raised most of that money at fundraisers, such as at ritzy locales like Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Aspen. If he wasn't there so often he might get to Culpeper once in a while. If you like the policies of George Bush, you'll like Eric Cantor, who voted with Mr. Bush 98% of the time.

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I think that both political parties miss out on leveraging the support from their millions of supporters. Both parties encourage them to "talk to your neighbors" and provides them with numerous talking points. But neither provides much help when it comes to HOW to talk to those undecided friends.

Proselytizing someone about your favorite candidate is generally not appreciated. And most people avoid doing that. But I think people-to-people contacts can be very effective. I'd hate to think that most people's opinions are based so much on yard signs, bumper stickers or TV ad sound bites.

In talking to friends, rather than recite the laundry list of issues, let the other person talk about what issues are important to them. Be ready to answer questions in as a non-partisan way as possible. You are more likely to have the desired result if you let people come to their own conclusions (with a little assist from yourself if needed) than if you try to inundate them with boiler plate talking points.

In the end, neither candidate will likely provide the nirvana their supporters may envision, nor be as evil as their detractors fear. I hope that we can get through this, then come together as best we can and then get right to work on improving this country.