Sunday Morning

Well, it’s Sunday morning and the smoke has cleared. Yesterday, South Carolina held its Republican primary and John McCain won (but you already knew that, didn't you.) Fred Thompson didn't do so well which might have had something to do with his campaign staff - one of which was quoted in this morning's paper as saying, "The campaign is still a campaign until it's not the campaign." What? Is that the kind of logic a degree in rhetoric will yield?

Down this way, a registered voter can vote in either primary regardless of declared party affiliation. Which means I could have voted yesterday despite my allegiance to that bastion of northern sensibility – the jackass….I mean donkey….I mean the Democratic Party. Alas, I’ll be waiting until next Saturday’s Primary to cast my vote - but most of you knew too that already, didn't you? And I frankly don't know who I'll vote for. I may be like the many Americans I hear on the news saying that they won't know know who they'll vote for until they walk into the voting booth. I can tell you that I often vote based on gut reactions to people. In my last job I had an opportunity to meet several people who were, or went on to be, political leaders in State or Federal government. And although I'd be very hard pressed to ever vote for him, Mitt Romney is one of the few politicians I met that came off as both genuine and generally likable. Most of them are pretty superficial - especially when dealing with very low placed constituents like me. I have the same sort of feeling about John Edwards although I've never met him. He seems like a very genuine kind of guy - but that opinion isn't based on any type of empirical data. I remember back in '04 (geez, this sounds like some old war story in the making. "Back in '04 when your uncle and me fought the rising tide of Chinese imports......" But I digress.) Anyway, in '04, Barack Obama gave a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I can remember being riveted to my television during his speech and then commenting to several people in days after that I thought Obama would make an excellent representative of the Democrats in '08 (which seemed like so far off at the time.) And then there is Hillary. I've never been a big fan of Ms. Clinton, but I also think she's been unjustly villianized. Most people seem to forget that she's not a First Lady turned politician but rather a politician who happened to serve as First Lady. In any case, I think people are quick to sell her short, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to vote for her.

But what really got me to musing on this issue was a conversation I had yesterday with Tommy at work. It's no secret that having been born and raised in the South, Tommy tends to have a conservative view of the world. Mind you, he's a pretty laid back, live-and-let-live kind of guy; he is, by no means, a radical right-winger. But unlike me, he chose to vote yesterday and, sufficed to say, he'll be at peace with the outcome. In any case we got to chatting about politics (which surprisingly isn't often the subject of conversation at work.) In any case, Tommy indicated that there were two "hot button" issues that helped him decide who to vote for - gay marriage and abortion. And it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to guess which side of these issues he comes down on. He feels so strongly about these issues that he declared that he would never be able to vote for a candidate that disagreed with his stance. Although Tommy and I are 180 degrees opposed on these two issues in terms of how we'd vote, I have to say that I very much respect (and envy) his integrity, clarity and decisiveness. For him there's no question involved - if a candidate doesn't share his convictions, he's not going to vote for them. It doesn't make his vote a given, but it does help weed out some of the clutter. While I have my own strong personal convictions regarding these issues, I don't share his adamancy - I would be hard pressed to completely discount a candidate based solely on their stance regarding these two issues. In fact, I don't think I can ever recall a candidate or platform plank that defined for me the way to vote. I do envy anyone who has that advantage. Well, I've got six days to try and make up my mind - hopefully some of Tommy's clarity of thought will rub off on me.

Hey, how 'bout them Patriots! Go New England!