Please Understand My Apathy

No I’m not trying to get myself in any trouble by using someone else’s acronym. Instead I’m trying to show that while P.U.M.A currently means “Political Unity My A##”, it can also mean different things to different people. Basically it all boils down to many unhappy, unaffiliated, and unconvinced voters who might have a surprise or two in store for both major political parties. We are the “Undecided”, the “Independents”, and the new P.U.M.A’s that both parties should set up and take notice of because they are going to need us in November.

By no means am I a cast-in-stone Democrat but admittedly my political beliefs usually fall just left of the political middle. Meaning, of course, that I’m a liberal to moderate Independent, depending on which party is courting my vote at the moment. I tend to lean toward whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be because, among other issues, as a female I don’t want anyone but me, my doctor, and my god, determining what I can and cannot do with my body. On top of that I’m not at all happy with the war-mongering attitude of the Republican Party either. Nor do I want someone in Washington, DC, who doesn’t even know me, determining who I can love and who I can marry. I don’t tell anyone else what he or she can and cannot do in their personal life so let them stay out of my personal business and everyone else’s.

My first choice of a Presidential Candidate, out of the entire field of Democratic and Republican candidates, was Governor Bill Richardson from New Mexico. He’s had foreign affairs experience under the Clinton Administration, he has dealt with state budgets, has experience dealing with illegal aliens and border problems, has a long record on issues that can be traced and examined, and would have made a wonderful President.

Short of Bill Richardson, I was willing to consider any candidate the Democratic Party nominated to carry the party banner even though the candidate may have been far left of what I would have preferred. That was until Howard Dean and the rest of the DNC stepped in and high jacked the entire Democratic Party. They demanded that delegates and super-delegates announce their Presidential Candidate choice before the Convention in Denver. In other words a candidate was again appointed for the people, instead of the people being the ones to do the appointing. This country has been plagued with voting problems and with Presidential Candidates being appointed for us since 2000, so maybe I shouldn’t have expected anything less this time around.

I did expect something different though; I expected a Democratic Party candidate who would lead Democrats and many Independents to the White House as a united force. We expected a candidate who would work to overturn many of the disastrous policies of the Bush Administration. What we got was Mr. Flip-Flopper, better known as Barack Obama. Many people are now wondering if he even knows what he’s talking about. As “David Brooks” puts it writing on “The American Mind” web site,“But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes. This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.”

I’m sorry but this is not my idea of a Presidential candidate. Oh, I know I’ll be accused of being racist, tied to the past, a “Hilbot” as was posted on one web site to someone else, or who knows what else the Obama devotees will come up with next. This, however, has nothing to do with race, sex, or any such thing. This has only to do with the qualifications of the person we need to undo the disasters of the Bush Administration.