PONDERING: Why Vote?

I have been thinking about why I still get passionate about my electoral choices, and what really does matter, with who we elect to high office. Some say it won't make any difference, one is the same as the next.  But it does matter.

Whoever is President gets to shape the Supreme Court, should any vacancies occur.  That can matter.

The President speaks to the rest of the world, establishes, and maintains the presence and image of this nation among other nations.

The President makes decisions that shape our course into the future, and into history.

Who is President can shift the balances of our potentials as a nation: whether we will remain competitive in the sciences, for instance, with the rest of the world, and in other areas of education: the past 50 years, while we have rested on our laurels as walkers-on-the-moon, assuming that our scientists would keep us first, the educating of the next generations of scientists have been sliding, and we are no longer first, whether we know it or not.

Who will we go to war with next, and for what?  When will we bring our fighting troops home?  How will this nation reward those soldiers, when they come home wounded, exhausted, mentally and emotionally battered? The President will decide a lot of what kind of nation we will be, and choose what battles we fight, in the world and at home.

We have had fools for President before.  The history of the Presidency can supply a list of flaws and blind-spots and misguidance from its very beginning.  In every election season we have had idealists, crooks, visionaries, puppets, fanatics, dreamers, hard-headed, large-hearted candidates... and some of them, we've elected, and the nation has survived.  But survival is not what it's about: It is about what and who we are, what we stand for, what we strive for, what we allow and what we don't.

And I think most of us who are passionate about who's running and who wins, who takes on the challenges and uses his (or her) truths and beliefs to shape the national path, we care about those things. 

No President will ever be the best person for the job, in everyone's eyes.  We don't need perfection. We don't even need the same qualities all the time. The job isn't the same from season to season, so we need one who can adequately answer the needs of the immediate and foreseeable times.  We don't need perfect answers, either, for that matter: We need steps in the most positive direction. We need someone we can trust...  Not to be unchangeable, but to not lie to us.

We need a President who is likely to get us into the least amount of trouble, as well as one who can get us out of the troubles we are already in.

That's what we are voting for.  That's why so many of us still bother to vote.

That, and because if we give up the privilege of voting, we give up the privilege of complaining about the results.