ben robison

American Election Prospects Aren’t Really That Bad

I can’t take credit for the thought, it was my wife that actually voiced it, but I thought it was appropriate. There’s been a lot of violence in Kenya culminating now in a max exodus of over 1 million people that are leaving the country. The refugees are convinced that the most recent elections which resulted in President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election was a sham, and that Raila Odinga really won.

Hundreds have died in the subsequent violent protests and now people are fleeing to get away from the violence and President Kibaki’s unwanted leadership.

As my wife and I saw this on the news again today, she said, “At least our elections aren’t that bad.” Last election when President George W. Bush was re-elected and called it a “mandate from the people” we really didn’t think he was a great candidate for the job. At the same time, we didn’t really think that Jonh Kerry was the best choice in the world, and we are stuck voting for the lesser of to evils. As things have turned out, perhaps we didn’t make the best choice after all, but the point was that either is better than the alternative demonstrated in Kenya. We didn’t have people fleeing the country by the millions.

Now of course more Americans have fallen to the war on terror than Kenyans have fallen to post-election violence; and of course the President of the United States of America has more power and more responsibility that then President of Kenya. I’m not going to even try to address those topics, but the whole things made me realize that this election is shaping up rather nicely.

Yes, the thought of another Clinton in office quite scares me, but the first Clinton didn’t do all that bad. He had some personal issues to be sure, but he actually made a pretty fair president. Obama seems like a pretty good option as well, and those are the democrats (is it bad to say that I’m a little less confident in the republicans?) On the republican side, you’ve got the religionists Mr. Romney and Mr. Huckabee, both lacking experience in some areas but both have a solid moral foundation. I’m not educated enough to have an opinion on Rudy Guliani. And there seems to be a lot of support for the dark horse Ron Paul (surely you’ve seen posters for him hanging from the overpasses) and I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about him.

So while our candidates are not perfect, there are a lot of good things to look forward to. What do you think?

Tags: elections, hillary, mitt, obama