One person's perspective on the Presidential election
By: Matt Holroyd
On November 4th at approximately 9:30 p.m. I limped with tears in my eyes onto a blue and white bus with 65 other tired, sad and spent men, ages 15 to 18. We had just played our final high school game of the season, and for most of the seniors, our careers. There were tears in the locker room after the game. Tears of sadness, disappointment and loss, yet at the same time there were tears of love, accomplishment and brotherhood. On the bus the team whipped out their cell phones to check with family, friends and girlfriends. Someone accessed the internet to view the election status. That is when the real tears began.
Barack Obama had tricked America and won the Presidential Election, and Christine Gregoire did not loosen her death grip on the state of Washington. At least Initiative 1000 passed so I would not have to live with them for long.
Now that jaws have been successfully dropped, let me retract my previous paragraph and simply put: The bus ride was extremely long after I had learned that my favorite candidates for the Presidential and Gubernatorial elections had lost. As Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Kenyans and the French celebrated I sat with smeared eye black on my face and pouted. Why was I so upset? Why did I feel like America had just unknowingly made a huge mistake?
Looking back I do not really know why I was so disappointed or felt so forlorn. I literally know absolutely nothing about either parties platform except the extremely cut version revealed to me through the personalities of Tina Fey, Eric Cartman and John Stewart. I knew that somehow Sarah Palin was a bad person because her daughter was pregnant out of wedlock, that Barack Obama’s middle name was Hussein which automatically made him a terrorist, and that John McCain was so old he would immediately die once elected and we would be stuck with the irresponsible mother as a president. Being completely honest, I knew nothing about Biden, but he seemed to be largely overlooked by the media as well.
The election was chock full of bashing and uncovering extraneous information about both candidates that I really lost focus of the true importance of the decision. I now know that Barack Obama smoked marijuana and supported a pastor that has damned America publicly for years and John McCain divorced his bed-ridden wife for a drastically younger woman. I do not want either of these men to be my president.
If the media and candidates cannot focus on what is truly important for our country, America is heading in the wrong direction. Party politics have divided our nation, and a legacy of passing the buck has left the position of President dissipated. I severely doubt President Obama will be able to accomplish what he has promised. Such radical change, whether for the better or the worse, will always face monumental opposition. Change is necessary yet extremely dangerous. The scariest part is whether or not America really knows what it has done, or if we simply voted in the more charismatic of two men vying for the most influential position in the nation.