Being born on Nov. 1 puts me in a pretty interesting position on Super Tuesday. Barely making the voting cut-off, a plethora of notifications and letters have been riddled my way. My mailbox, TV and e-mail have been swarmed with messages from Barack and Mitt telling me how terrible the other candidate is. The negative advertising campaigns have left me turned off as a voter and associating negative connotations with both major candidates. I feel like this isn’t how presidential campaigns should be conducted.
Slanderous lies have filled the airways from both sides for the past several months, depicting two men in both positive and negative lights. Mitt has ads against Obama. Obama has ads against Mitt. Lying about your opponent does not make me want to vote for you. Telling the truth about yourself does. Why has Romney not shown his tax returns? Why did it take Obama so long to release his birth certificate?
Being a first time voter and picking one candidate over the other has been a difficult decision. Romney knows economics. Obama knows foreign policy. It’s a shame that today’s world has strayed away from picking the best president, and leaped toward picking the candidate with the best image. Do you remember that stalky, awkward, failed lawyer that ran for president in the 1860s? Do you really think that an Abraham Lincoln would be elected in today’s world?
People associate power with image. Today, if a person looks powerful, then he or she most likely is. Unfortunately, that stigma has weaved its way into every part of our modern, American society. Unfortunately, it is the deciding factor for who becomes the next president.
Debates, personal images, and lies aside, I am curious about what really is going to happen. What will President Obama do if he is re-elected? What will Gov. Romney do if he is elected? What about the slew of third party candidates like Gov. Gary Johnson? Politicians need to cut the crap and show America what they stand for. They need to show America real projected outlooks for the next four years. We live in a world shadowed by fear and paranoia. Just the thought of economic turmoil makes many afraid to vote. Here’s the truth: economic turmoil is here and the burden from today is being shoved onto the generation of tomorrow. If nothing is changed in the next few years, then America—the beautiful—will take a slippery slope into the realm of inequality and injustice. In some places and for some people, that realm is already reality.
This election is quite possibly the most important economic election in the history of America. As a country, we face an unreal deficit that has been itching at our country’s credibility; one in six Americans is below the poverty line, and Congress has agreed to work against the presidency to destroy our system of checks and balances. We face a turning point in our nation’s history. One man will win the seat on Tuesday. One man will be given a country to recover. One man will either succeed or fail. Every vote counts.
Ethan Dayton
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
*Editor’s Notes are published the first and third Friday of every month, as well as the Friday that an issue is released.
