Do politics the easy way: hop on a bandwagon!
Ah, campaign season: A glorious time when old rich people prance around on television and tell us why they are exactly what this country needs.
They speak to us in warm tones, promising to solve all of our problems. John McCain emphasizes he has the experience and leadership skills to be the next commander-in-chief. Barack Obama says he will bring change to Washington while Hillary Clinton wants to hand out health care like free samples at a grocery store.
But who to choose?
There is a vast world of information out there, countless research Web sites and news reports to sift through for information about each candidate. But how could anyone hope to find enough free time to make an intelligent, informed decision about the candidates?
Well, my friends, the answer lays right here at the University of Nevada, Reno. That’s correct, the college students at UNR, as well as other universities around America, have got it all figured out.
The solution is to use an age-old technique: Do what everyone else is doing. That’s right, the bandwagon. It is comfy and stylish, so hop on! It eliminates the need for sifting through history and a myriad of pesky news reports, all while still making you feel good about participating in the American political process.
But wait, if this is a bandwagon, there must be someone driving it. Well, we can rest assured that it is our good friend from Illinois, Obama.
We don’t have to worry about anything anymore: Obama will fix Washington. I mean, who could argue with a man who has so much experience in the senate and—actually, forget about that part. We don’t want to appear like we are actually thinking this through. After all, the bandwagon is rolling—if we wait too long, we will miss it.
We may wonder why Obama has been able to gather such a following from university students. The reason is that young people truly feel that support for Obama is a movement. To them, it is something real and tangible, something that excites them.
Our college students have heard Obama speak. Some have even seen him in person. There can be no doubt that he is a powerful and motivating speaker. And why should college students need any more than that? If he can get me excited about politics just by talking, he must be our man.
Good old George Bush is a bad public speaker, and therefore must be a bad president. But since Obama has a wonderful way with words, he will obviously be a good president.
This just makes me wish we had more influential people in history who were good public speakers. If only there was someone else who could inspire an entire public and drive them to action just with his words.
Nevertheless, Obama reaches out to college students and has been very successful at grabbing their support. Many young people are displeased with the current administration.
In their infinite wisdom, college students have protested against the war in Iraq. This religious civil war is not our problem, they say. We went in without provocation or invitation and took out the bad guys to rebuild the country. They want to leave and move our resources to better endeavors, such as Darfur, where they want to enter a country without provocation, take out the bad guys and rebuild it. Trust me, it makes sense on a college campus.
The central point is that they want change, they want something new. Obama promises that. He values hope and change and is continuously asking us to believe in ourselves and in this country. Obama doesn’t care that leaving Iraq will create a power vacuum and abandon the civilians to the whim of the terrorists. He wants to change Washington, and he wants college students like you and me to help him do it.
So move forward, my fellow Nevadans. When the general election rolls around, remember those three sound bites you heard from Obama. Remember the rally that was so inspiring it made you decorate your car with Obama signs and stickers.
Don’t worry about those McCain supporters over there. Pay no attention to their claims of silly things such as “experience” and “leadership skills.” Instead, you have a man who knows how to drive a bandwagon, a man who can make any sentence sound hopeful and inspiring. A man like that could make it to the White House.
So go exercise your constitutional right, go to the voting booth and vote for change. Because as sure as the sky is blue, change is what Obama would bring.
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May 6th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Sorry, but I have to disagree on pretty much every level here.
But here are just a few quotes that seemed to scream out for response:
“Good old George Bush is a bad public speaker, and therefore must be a bad president.”
I think that statement in itself disproves the point that speaking ability and leadership ability aren’t connected
“I mean, who could argue with a man who has so much experience in the Senate and… Well forget about that part.”
The fact that Barack hasn’t been in Washington that long is part of his appeal. He hasn’t been in Washington long enough to be corrupted by Washington politics. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the experience to lead us. His entire life has been dedicated to this country and its people. After attending Columbia University, Barack could have gone on to much bigger and better things, but instead he decided to devote himself to the duties of a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, helping the poor working class families there. Then after he graduated from Harvard Law school, he could have become a corporate lawyer, raking in the dough (like Hillary), but instead choose to work as a civil rights attorney, helping the downtrodden to find their voice. He also served as a constitutional law professor. Imagine that, a president who actually understands and believes in the constitution! After that he was elected to the Illinois Senate and served there for 7 years before being elected to the US Senate in Illinois and serving for 4 years. He has the experience; it’s just not the kind of experience we’ve seen in most all of our politicians. And if that kind of experience was an indication of adept leadership ability, then how do you explain the fiasco that is the Bush administration and Dick Cheney?
“Pay no attention to their claims of silly things such as ‘experience’ and ‘leadership skills.’”
As I said above, it’s not that he doesn’t have experience; it is simply a different kind of experience. He’s not saying that leadership and experience are not important, or even that he doesn’t have them. He has those qualities. But he also has a freshness about him; he brings an outsider’s point of view to the table. He has different ideas, ideas that haven’t been tried repeatedly over the past decade and yet continue to disappoint. He’s closer to the people. He hasn’t been trapped in Washington or bogged down by partisan politics long enough to forget about the people of America. He doesn’t pander to the special interests, like a most of our politicians, and he isn’t so closely married to the Democratic Party that he can’t reach across the aisle and try to bring republicans and democrats together for the betterment of our country. He has the ability to unite many different people with differing beliefs and backgrounds across the country. No other candidate has been able to match the number of crossover voters that Obama has won over in this election. This country has been divided along partisan lines for too long, and Obama may just be the one man who can change this and bring our nation back together. But most of all, he has the judgment and integrity to lead this nation. He doesn’t change his message depending on the crowd he’s addressing. He tells people not what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. He’s not the kind of politician that’s going to lie to your face. This was apparent when he spoke out against the war in Iraq at a time when it was unpopular and even unpatriotic to speak out against the actions of the government and especially the president. He is the only presidential candidate to do so, and at great political risk; a huge testament not only his straightforward nature, but his great judgment and ability to lead our country down the right path.
“This just makes me wish that we had more influential people in history who were good public speakers”
How about JFK, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln? They certainly had a certain ability to inspire the masses with their words; does that somehow diminish their abilities and accomplishments? And what about MLK? Whose eloquent words inspired a movement unto themselves. It takes words to inspire action my friend, so don’t under appreciate their power.
“The reason is because young people truly feel that it is a movement. To them it is something real and tangible, something that excites them.”
And “ The central point is that they want change, they want something new. Obama promises that. He values hope and change, and is continuously asking us to believe in ourselves and believe in this country.”
I’m sorry, but somehow I do not understand what is wrong with these statements. Is it wrong to be excited about something? To feel like you can actually make a difference in this world? To feel like someone is finally listening to what you have to say – that you have finally found your voice? To think that maybe, just maybe we are finally waking up and realizing the many wrongs of society and actually doing something to change them?
The youth have always been viewed as politically apathetic in this country. We turn out to polls in record lows and usually just complain about what’s wrong in society and do nothing to fix it. Finally the youth are getting involved. We’re turning out to the polls in record numbers and finally taking some ownership of our country and its many faults and getting involved in the political process. How can this possibly be viewed as a bad thing? We finally have something real that we can work for. Yes, it is a movement, a movement that is sweeping the country not because we are all mindless drones who simply want to follow the herd, but because Barack Obama has personally inspired each of us, for as many individual reasons.
We truly believe he can turn this country around. It has been headed down the wrong path for a long time, headed by an administration that seems to care little for what the people want and need. Barack is someone who listens to the public, who knows what we want. His movement represents our generation, much like the JFK generation, waking up to the wrongs of society and working to change them. He does represent Hope. Hope that we’re not too late to fix the problems of the world. Hope that we can actually do something to fix our country. Hope for a bright future; that the America of tomorrow will be a little better off than the America of today.
And he certainly represents change; something that we are starved for of late, with our current administration. He is not the typical Washington politician, he is anything but. And that is what draws us to him. We can put in the same politicians year after year and try the same methods one after another and expect to see some kind of change. That is why Barack Obama is the candidate for change (and just for the record, our campaign used it first).
May 6th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
1) To imply that all student supporters of Barack Obama are only doing so because his speeches are inspiring is not only an insult to your fellow students, but to make such a broad claim is also wrong. Though I agree that there may exist many who do not research Obama beyond listening to his speeches, I assure you that there are an equal amount who support McCain based solely on the fact that he is Republican. Or maybe because he is a war hero, which he deserves respect for, but does not really qualify him to be President. Furthermore, while they might incessantly bring up the few sounds bites of Rev. Jeremiah Right in regards to Obama, they will completely block out McCain’s ties to Rev. John Hagee, who has said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for a scheduled homosexual parade, and whose endorsement McCain sought. I am not saying that ALL McCain supporters are like this, just as you have no basis in saying that Obama supporters are simply jumping on a bandwagon.
2) Your inference that the only problem people have with President Bush is his inability to form coherent sentences is absurd. Of course one would expect the President of the United States to be able to speak well, but if that were his only flaw, his approval rating would NOT be so low. Yes, it has something to do with his decision to preemptively attack a sovereign nation. It also has something to do with the fact that since 2001 he has attempted to expand the executive branch immensely, deciding that he can pretty much do whatever he wishes during times of war, the atrocities occurring at Guantanamo Bay and redefining torture being just two examples. The list goes on, but I won’t list all of the problems here. His speaking mishaps are something to poke fun at. His presidency is something that makes me feel slightly nauseas.
3) I guarantee you that there is NO Darfur activist group that has ever proposed sending in American troops to Darfur, or any other area of Sudan. Though that is something that President Bush has periodically suggested, it is Condaleeza Rice who has to explain to him that we, indeed, cannot invade another Muslim and oil-rich country. Rather, groups like STAND are asking that the United States fulfill its financial obligation to the United Nations in deploying the peacekeeping force, which President Omar Al-Bashir has agreed to, but is attempting to stall. Connecting Darfur to Iraq does nothing to further either cause.