Overwrought and Underthought

The nice thing about being back in daily employment is that I get to have regular conversations with thinking adults. Of course, that can be a bad thing, too. Still, being at a news station means talking about the news ALL THE TIME. Nope, not even banal chatter on how it's still warm for this time of year. Even the humorous (?) musings are based on whatever stories are being worked up. ALL THE TIME. Thus, I'm very ready for some football.

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today. Not about football, or coffee, or sports betting. Politics, naturally. Most of my news colleagues are 10 years or more younger, so I take my debates with them as more of a challenge than someone older, or of similar age than me. Anyway, we were talking politics and the topic shifted to the presidential election. I'd made it known that I was going to vote for McCain and has was an Obama guy. I'm not surprised he's an Obama guy, but I was disappointed in the reasons he was.

He discounts McCain's military service. "That doesn't make you qualified to be president". Yet, he didn't counter with a reason why Obama was more qualified. True, just because you survived as a POW doesn't put you at the front of the line, but military service for our Commander in Chief is invaluable. The president is the commander of the U.S. military, and we're two weeks away from electing someone to run the military who has zero military experience. I don't know, but to me that's kinda big.

I brought up the question "who do the Islamic Fascists want in the White House?". This got the response of "I don't care who they want, it's who we want". A lovely response, if you're talking about, say, France. I don't care who the French want. I do care who the people we're fighting every day want. If they feel they can do more damage to us through an Obama presidency than a McCain presidency, this is important. Isn't this simple?

My colleague likes how everyone at the Obama rallies are polite, and get along and, well, just be. Great. They did the same thing in Germany, circa 1933, and that didn't turn out so well for anyone. "Getting along" with everyone isn't important. People can't even get along under their own roof, so to expect it on a larger scale is nothing but a pipe dream. My colleague says there's too much meanness at McCain/Palin rallies. I don't know if I agree with that. Fights aren't breaking out. No one's been hospitalized. I think they're frustrated that their guy is probably going to lose. If that's the case, they're similar to the Obama supporters. But here's the thing. When talking about Republicans, emotion is called "anger". With Democrats, it's called "passion".

Obama talks a great game, his ads are tremendous, and I can't deny being extremely curious how President Obama would do. Still, the fact that more people are inspired by his words than his deeds tells me that a well financed salesman could win the office someday. Like, two weeks from tomorrow.