With Liberty and Justice for All

So here we sit on the verge of arguably the most important election in our nation in the last half century, if not longer, and I turn on my cable box and what do I find? Vitriol and venom being spewed by the candidates and their surrogates aimed at discrediting and dehumanizing the opponent? Hardly. Half-truths, misleading statements and lies aimed at whipping up the partisan faithful into a frothy frenzy of anger and rage? Not quite. References to all kinds of Joe’s, from Joe Six Pac to Joe the Plumber to Joe the average guy from Scranton? Not particularly.

What I saw instead, was the two candidates for a most serious position in the most serious of times exchanging barbs and wisecracks, mostly poking good humored fun at themselves. Was I aghast that such tomfoolery could be occurring at a time when we should all be wringing our hands and shaking our heads, clinging to our guns and religion for dear life and planning for the apocalypse? Hell no! I was laughing my backside off, especially at Senator McCain, who while he may not have written all the jokes, certainly pulled them off like a veteran of standup. Say what you want about McCain, and believe me I won’t stop you, but the man has a sense of humor. And Senator Obama showed a humorous side as well, more of the dry witty type, and a bit prone to chuckling at his own jokes, which I am personally accused of doing by my biggest critic, my fourteen year-old sweetheart of a son, but Obama was funny as well.

So why should these two be telling jokes and poking fun when we are all going to hell in a hand basket, apparently up the proverbial Shiite creek without a paddle? Because it’s good to laugh, and it’s even better not to take ourselves too seriously. I’m sure I will be accused of being flippant about all that ails us, and if so my only response is, well, I don’t have a response, you’re as entitled to your seriousness as I am to my sarcasm, whatever gets you through the day. But I really think that with tensions running so high and emotions at such a fever pitch, it’s not a bad idea to step back and remember that we are all on the same team here after all.

We may have different ideas for how to improve our nation and our society in general. We can differ on whether or not Joe the Plumber should get a tax break, or whether Russians can also see Sarah Palin from their front yard, or any number of more serious issues, such as how to best end our addiction to oil, foreign as well as domestic, how best to provide health care and education to our people, how to spur job creation and how to best distribute the wealth we have. But at least we are on the same page that these are issues that need to be dealt with, even if we disagree on the best means of doing so. It’s not like one candidate is saying that we should have no education or health care, and jobs are overrated, or that we should keep on burning as much oil as we can, smoke ‘em while we got ‘em.

Seeing the two candidates brought home that these are decent men, as are most people that get into public service. Not that power doesn’t change and sometimes corrupt good men and women, and I don’t subscribe to cannonization and hero worship, they are people same as the rest of us, just with more power, publicity, and in some cases a few more houses. But they, and this includes our current president, are not evil doers intent on oppressing us for their own nefarious purposes.

We live in a republic, which basically means that we choose people to act on our behalf. We hold free and fair elections on a regular basis, and while we have a system that is far from perfect and always in need of reform, it is still as Churchill said, the best form of government that has so far been devised, flaws and all. It is all too easy to turn to cynicism and the politics of demonization, and all sides are guilty of their fair share. In times such as this, it is all the more important that we, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately. We are after all, one nation, under God, if you, like me, still believe in such things, and we ought to strive for liberty and justice for all, regardless of who wins the election and takes the reigns of power.