Today, in the third election since I turned 18, I voted for Barack Obama. It's a little bit of a different experience, penciling in ovals at my desk in my room and sealing the ballot in an envelope, instead of heading to the polls. It is somewhat worrisome to place my ballots significance in the hands of the USPS but I guess Washington is enough of a blue state.
Our last show (as a full band) for a while is on Wednesday with Blitzen Trapper at the Badlander in Missoula, MT. After that I'll be doing some traveling, performing, recording, by myself.
I sure hope that if you are reading this, you aren't the kind of person who is swayed in political leanings by a guy like me, but I also hope that as many of you as possible vote for Barack Obama, especially all y'all in the red states. Or I at least hope that if you don't support Barack Obama, that you will stay home on November 4th. Here are my reasons-
1. He's most likely to fix the economy
2. He's will end the Iraq War sooner
3. He will be more diplomatic with our enemies and our allies
4. He is smarter
5. His running mate would be a better president than either of the Republicans
Number Four is probably more important than the rest. It would just be really nice to have a leader of the free world who is smarter than most people in the free world. It's a luxury we haven't enjoyed since the 90s, which I didn't really enjoy because A) I was a teenager and B) the red state I was in was too caught up in the Lewinsky scandal to care about all the economic expansion and good stuff the Clinton presided over.
Anyway, people will try to say that Obama may be smart, but that someone who is smart must not be powerful or willing to stand up to terrorist which is basically bullshit. This is the politics of fear and George Bush and cowboys. From what I've read in history books and Wikipedia and seen on the History channel, the last politician who really seemed like Obama's kind of agent of change, was Kennedy, who wasn't afraid to speak softly and carry a big stick. Anyway, I'm rambling, it's late. The point is this- McCain's day is over, his way of politics was relevant in the 70s and 80s. The 2000s is a more nuanced landscape, a lot of in's and out's, in the parlance of our times. I mean we're in a war on terror- that's a war on ideas. We need a President with ideas and a President who knows the only way to fight ideas is to change the way people think, which as the first viable black candidate he's already proven he can do. But he can do way more than that. Way more.
Posted by john at October 21, 2008 4:02 AM