Personal Jesus

EDITOR'S NOTE
Okay, ya got me. I haven't graced these screens for a time. Sometimes the dead have little to say. I allow them their silence. Besides, much has occurred since last I wrote. I ran a campaign to get elected to the Montana Legislature. I will admit defeat in the Primary but I admit NO SHAME! I am proud of our campaign and what fun we had doing it. I would do it again in a heartbeat if time machines were things of reality and not fiction. To any and all who read this, I recommend running for office once in your life. It opens your eyes to the process in both the good aspects...as well as the negative. I've been observing the national campaign from this perspective and a few things have tweaked me. Hence my note ends and my entry begins.

I've become one of those people. I used to watch news in the evening and feel up to date, but over the past few years that changed. Now I'm one of the people who gets deep information online and use the news as pure gloss of current happenings. I call it the Cliff's Notes approach to news: Summarize and I can pick what I want. I peruse many sites but I check out Slate.com a lot because they have waaaaaay too much time on their hands. They analyze things to nanobits. Some's good, some's not but an article popped out at me last week. It was in their Jurisprudence section which is about all things legal. The writer (and no, I don't remember the name) was writing about Obama's answer key to a test he'd administered as an Instructor in law school. The piece was okay but the whole angle of it annoyed me. The writer implied that many of the suggested answers didn't show Obama's legal positions on issues. They were too general and too supportive of varied viewpoints. Ummm, oookay. That's probably because this was an EXAM for EDUCATIONAL purposes, not some judicial examination for a Presidential candidate. What were they expecting for the love of god?

Media has its place, but the obsessive actions are becoming overwhelming. In the past (early to mid 20th Century) Presidents were viewed as important but they were allowed some distance from public eyes. FDR was in a wheelchair for years and the public was unaware, Kennedy had the rumors of close friendship with a Hollywood actress and god knows what Nixon kept hidden. Okay, the Nixon thing made Executive privacy a problem but I kinda think we overcompensated a bit. Now, we examine and re-examine and re-re-examine these people until we're exhausted and I don't see how this obsessive pursuit helps. People now have jobs that are nothing but watching and waiting for candidates to screw up. Isn't that kinda sick? Like waiting jackals, they fidget and fight behind garish grins to have the first chance to break some kind of garbage news, destroying campaigns and people and families. Why?

In essence, why the hell was someone at Slate combing through an Obama answer key from years and years ago? What would have satisfied that person? For that matter, what would satisfy us all? If we check and check and check into the candidate's opinions, personality and everything else, we may find things flawless and ordered. Yeaaaaaaa, we found a Saint...but have we found a President? Simply put, we've exploded these events into American Messiah. Maybe Simon Cowell should be involved and we could vote by touch tone phone.

The President's a person (imagine you with a better education and overexposed in the media) and yet we act like we CANNOT vote for someone unless they 100% agree with us, show Solomon-like wisdom and incidentally walk on water or heal by touch or banish the demons of inflation and Iran with a wave of his mighty suited arm. Delusion, anyone? Well, we've let the politicians and media convince us that, unless a candidate is on the level of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, Muhammad, the Buddha, Zoroaster or Confucius, we CANNOT possibly vote for them. These expectations are insane and we really need to take our head outta the high-def, latte sipping, multitasking, cell phone texting, fact-a-second oven we're in and recognize reality. The personage of the President is important, but Jesus ain't walking into the White House. So, QUIT looking for him and ACCEPT the VERY HUMAN candidates for who they are.