Thursday, September 6, 2012

Hi. A couple of days ago, a wrote a piece that gave my advice to a friend who is a liberal when it comes to social issues, but who believes we need a fiscal conservative in The White House. Her dilemma has to do with compromising her social concerns in return for getting us out of our current economic and financial mess. I did my best to assure her that it wasn’t a matter of one or the other, but of setting priorities.

And then it occurred me, after having watched some of the Republican and now Democrat Conventions, that I didn’t go far enough. Consider this brief article to be a postscript to the one I wrote on Tuesday.

I think it would help if my friend thought of the two political parties as the candidates’ families. I don’t know about you, but I was somewhat reluctant to introduce girls I was dating to my parents. Don’t misunderstand, my parents were very good people, it’s just that they were, obviously, from a different era while I, from their point of view, was from a different planet. Fortunately, their idiosyncrasies never seemed to phase any of my dates – not even, thank goodness, the last woman I dated who actually agreed, sometime later, to marry me. (To this day, I’m fairly certain she believes that, unbeknownst to me, I was adopted. That explains why my parents and other family didn’t bother her so much. “Well,” she once commented feigning humor, “it’s not like you were raised by wolves.” Thank you, dear.)

The point is, both parties, Republicans and Democrats alike, are full of spinners, outright liars, left- and right-wingnuts of all kinds and points of view. ..Relax. We’re not electing all of them President, just the two candidates who are actually running for office. We’re going to “date” one of them for four years. This isn’t forever. No one’s getting married, and you don’t even have to sleep with the guy, thank goodness.

So, while the candidates were raised by their respective parties, they are their own people, just like you and me relative to our extended families. There are just two people running for office. Pick the one you want to see in The White House for the next four years – based only on what they have to say for themselves and what they can do for America, and leave their parties out of it.

That’s my advice, and I’m sticking to it.

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