I’ve been waiting patiently for the day I’m finally able to cast my first vote in a presidential election.
Now, two months away from voting day, I couldn’t be less excited. Instead, I’ve got this awful knot in my stomach tied together by feelings of powerlessness and disappointment. Neither candidate can lay claim to what I value most in my president: integrity. I can’t trust either candidate and there’s nowhere to turn except the lesser of two evils.
As a young voter, I’m trapped. I’m defeated.
I woke up last Friday to find Romney making a joke about Obama’s ‘elusive’ birth certificate to a crowd in Michigan. “Who cares?” I thought. The Democrats, the party I’ve reluctantly aligned myself with, were up in arms: “Governor Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, reported The Washington Post.
Wasn’t it just last week I read about Obama taking similar potshots at Romney? During a speech on wind energy in Iowa on Aug. 14, Obama humorously invoked the infamous account of Romney strapping his dog to the roof of a car. According to USA Today’s The Oval, Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said, “President Obama continues to embarrass himself and diminish his office with his un-presidential behavior.”
I think both of these campaign spokesmen have a point — it’s getting tough for me to discern right from left.
Romney has maintained a reputation for flip-flopping politically, both in 2008 as the Republican nominee hopeful, and now in 2012 as their front-runner. As a registered Democrat, I felt obliged to defend Obama when he was accused of comparable offenses, but I just can’t do it anymore.
In 2008, running against McCain, Obama stated, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman…God’s in the mix,” but this year, he has endorsed same-sex marriage entirely. The polarity of Obama’s take on this issue is distressing. All it says to me is: I wasn’t willing to take that risk, but now, I need the gay vote.
Why couldn’t he stand up for his beliefs the first time? Why did he have to be so afraid when we needed him to be brave? I don’t care who’s right or wrong anymore; all I want is a candidate who will stick to his guns.
Both candidates are just two sides of the same tarnished, faceless corporate coin. Tea-partying conservatives, who believe the government has too much power, and Wall Street-occupying liberals, who believe corporations have too much power, are upset about the same thing. Corporations lobby for influence in government and, in return, the government executes regulations favorable to corporations. Here we are, left and right, bickering with each other over who has the best means to the same end. It’s getting the American people nowhere.
Where are our Jacksons and Lincolns to set a confused and weak America right? Who’ll turn us into the country that Romney and Obama keep promising us we can be? We’re long overdue for a “clean” political candidate, but I’m afraid that these days, that’s an oxymoron.
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu. Follow the columnist at @MrJakeWAdler.
