Bad Choices

So, Focus on the Family pres. Dr. James Dobson has said that a John McCain nomination would mean he "will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life."

On the one hand, I can feel Dr. Dobson's pain -- my politics is my own business and I won't foist it on you, but I feel safe in saying that the modern political process consistently produces uninspiring choices for most races. Few candidates really tell us what they think about certain things without filtering those statements through party platforms, focus groups, fund-raising impact, sound-bite-ishness, etc. Few give us real policy strategies for reaching the lofty goals they promise. Which only makes sense -- a president can promise to legislate the trans fat out of Twinkies, but when he (or she) heads to work in the morning, there are 535 other titanic egos with their own agendas, debts to pay, personality quirks and Moses-meets-Cicero need to be and sound important waiting for him (or her) up on Capitol Hill. Then there's folks back home like you and me, who don't know any more about the issue than the webpage header we read a couple minutes ago but who equate our right to be heard with a right to be catered to (catered Twinkies...mmmmmm).

But on the other hand, it seems Dr. Dobson never has had to hold his nose and mark a ballot before, and so I say to him, "Wah." As someone who walked into an Oklahoma voting booth on Nov. 6, 1990 and realized what I was about to do would play a role in making either David Walters or Bill Price my governor for the next four years, I have absolutely no sympathy for his dilemma. That choice was so wrong that independent Thomas D. Ledgerwood II received nearly 10 percent of the vote, more than any third-party Oklahoma gubernatorial candidate ever had up to that point.

So I hope the good doctor cowboys up and does like us lesser mortals who nearly always have to vote for the least bad choice. After all, for most of us, the ideal candidate is one who agrees with us on everything, does things the way we would do them and always listens to everything we say.

But I've never seen my mirror on any ballot.