God Bless America! For real?

A Hearty Hello!
and a Grand Welcome Back!
to Matt and Brian and my Mom and Dad, aka My Audience!

Thank you for your support. I am honored that you all would take the time to read what's going on in my mind. So, you ask, what is going on? Anything?

Well, thanks to a couple friendly reminders and the historic 2008 Presidential Primaries, I'm back on the Blogosphere, if you will. Bridget and I have been watching dangerous levels of MSNBC, C-Span, CNN, PBS, and any channel that carries political coverage. Coverage here generally means short bursts of Live footage from each campaign, followed by virutally ceaseless hours of commentary about those short bursts.

I have discovered a few things during my political bingeing.

-Barack Obama is the best candidate for president I have ever seen, and most of that is simply due to the fact that he IS authentic, honest, principled, and a leader in the truest sense of the word. In the words of the great David Foster Wallace, he is "in the ballpark of an ACTUAL human being". Candidates past and present who are Not In the Ballpark include...

Mitt Romney (He doesn't know where the ballpark is.)
Hillary Clinton (She used to know. Now she just pretends she's in the ballpark.)
John Kerry (Same for him.)
Rudy Giuliani (Every sentence includes A verb. A Noun. And 9/11. Clearly Not a Human.
George Bush (Duh)

and the list goes on...

But my point is that it's really not that hard to tell who is "acting" from who is simply "being." (To be fair, all politicians act, but you catch my drift right?) For decades I've been astonished that anyone could actually watch someone like Mitt Romney speak, and also BELIEVE the things he's saying. How can you believe that he believes? How can you listen to him and conclude "He does speak for me! He represents my interests! He really does believe in the things I believe in! He really does care about me as more than just a political tool to get him elected whereupon he will come back to screw me out of a job so that him and his cronies can make more money and consolidate power over the working class!"

The same goes for GW Bush. It has continued to baffle me over the years. How can people NOT SEE that he is lying and manipulative and in essence, is completely full of shit? I'm not talking about his political policies or his political party. I'm talking about Bush as a person. We all know BS artists. We've all met the salesman who will say ANYTHING to get you to buy his products. So how is it that we didn't identify GW Bush has one of "those" right from the beginning? Maybe it's because we expect our politicians to be fake and manipulative, so we just accept that they are and hope for the best. Maybe we just want so badly to believe that our President is a man of honor and integrity, that when he tells us he is, we believe him. I don't really know why we accept total phonies to represent us. But this year is different. You'll notice who I did NOT put on the list of politicians who are Not in the Ballpark of an Actual Human Being.

Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Barack Obama

What in the world could these three guys have in common, aside from being 3 of the 4 Presidential candidates still standing?

I'll tell you what they have in common. Some folks call it "character", some folks call it "honesty", some folks call it "credibility". I think the best word to describe it is "integrity". The 2nd best word to describe it is "authenticity". They are men of their word. They are motivated by patriotism, not by profit, although I'm sure they will all be quite well off financially after this campaign. They have beliefs which constitute the core of their character, their soul, and they DO NOT BETRAY their own SOULS to get elected!

*I'm a little uncomfortable including McCain in this group, he was right in the middle of the ballpark in 2000, he's barely in the bleachers now, but he's still there I think...

But what I am LOVING with all of my own soul in this election, more than a woman and a black man vying for the Democratic nomination, more than the splintering of the Republican party, more than the grace, courage, wisdom, and humor of Mr. Obama, is that it appears America is finally rejecting the phoniest candidates and embracing those with true authenticity, credibility, and honesty.

If my theory here is correct, all I can say is,

God Bless America!

ok one more thing...

It's about Time!

ok one more thing

Vote Barack Obama in 2008!

Peace
Marcus Singer

ps
I've seen hours and hours and hours of pundits over the past week. Not one of them has even mentioned words like "credibility" "authenticity" and "honesty" as reasons why people are voting how they are.

pps
Not to toot my own horn here, it's a popular thing to do on a blog and all...

pps
Toot! Toot! ;)