I was actually thinking of sitting this one out, despite my pledge as a naturalized U.S. citizen to fulfill my civic obligation to vote. In a traditionally blue state I’ve been feeling blue about the state of the nation (and the state of the state). I am one of the disillusioned Obama voters you’ve been hearing so much about recently.
I was in my teens when Jimmy Carter was president. I was too young to take a direct hit to my own pocketbook, but I do remember the general sense of doom and gloom punctuated by long gas lines outside the house and inside the house, the fretting of stressed out parents worried about saving for college and paying the bills. Those were not the good old days, and they are feeling all too familiar.
So I was going to mix it up a bit come November and pull the Republican lever just to make things interesting, but then wondered about the wisdom of negating some of the inevitable votes in my nuclear family. We now have four full-fledged voters; this year Molly will be casting her ballot in her very first presidential election. No sense in wasting our time and votes.
Moreover, one of my biggest pet peeves in life is people who tell lies, and after hearing the outright falsehoods uttered by vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, I can not stomach the thought of having him in office. Does he think Americans are so stupid that they will believe everything he says? If he is so “flexible” with the truth as a candidate, what kind of travesties will he perpetuate once he holds power? As the patient spouse of an athlete who competes in bicycle races, I know how proud those athletes are of their times; how dare Ryan shave off the truth of his own marathon time by almost one full hour. It is insulting.
As for Mitt Romney, I could go on and on. One of the biggest areas of discomfort with the American people is his Mormon religion. But I do not want to go there given President John F. Kennedy and the protests raised about his Catholicism. To me, his religion should have been a non-factor given his leadership abilities and integrity.
But with Romney, there is the general perception of privilege and cluelessness that does hit too close to the truth. I have to admit that his family and Ryan’s made a beautiful and stirring tableau on stage at the Republican National Convention. They looked like they came straight out of a Ralph Lauren ad, and if you wanted to feel that all was right with the world, all you had to do was to look at the happy tow-headed children bouncing those red, white, and blue balloons. I did feel an eerie sense of deja vu –– this brought back a memory of those Reagan years that for many Americans were colored by a sense of well-being and optimism.
But I have reconsidered my thoughts about sitting out, and I have to credit one woman who took the stage with strength and grace, and that was first lady Michelle Obama. She rocked the dress, she rocked the pink high heels; she was the picture of confidence and passion.
But it was her words that moved me more than most of the rest of the campaigning and punditry have done to date. She brought her husband, the most powerful man in the world, down to a level to which most of us regular folk could relate –– they, too, struggled to pay off student loans; given their race and place in history, they, too, have suffered the sting of racism and rejection; they, too worry about the future of their beautiful children at the same time that they dream the American dream for them.
In a few minutes on the national stage, Michelle Obama made the nation see the president as a husband and father first and foremost, and she, despite her Princeton pedigree and Pennsylvania Avenue address, was first and foremost the quintessential suburban mom, speaking of family, love, and the future.
The picture of President Obama and their two daughters watching her spoke volumes. There is the younger Sasha pointing excitedly at her mother on the screen; there is the more reticent Malia looking on with interest and pride. But it is the expression on the face of the president that is priceless –– it says something like, wow, she rocks, and wow, that’s my wife, the most beautiful, smartest woman in the world, and man, am I proud of her. It is a look that every woman would wish that she would get from the man in her life.
Our nation is indeed in a deep funk. The hope of four years ago, along with much of the goodwill toward our sitting president, seems to have evaporated. Unemployment still looms way too high; housing prices way too low. I don’t want to pay more taxes, but I don’t want my parents or in-laws to pay more for healthcare benefits. Our roads, bridges, and tunnels seem sickly, and even escalators and elevators seem downright undependable. It seems unfair to lay the blame on the president, as many of the problems preceded him and are beyond the power of one man alone to fix.
But dare we say that with the right woman behind him, she is more likely to continue to push him in the right direction? I guess we’ll all find out in just a couple of months.
