I find this sort of reactionary politics very distressing. Elections that are won on the platform of “I’m not the other guy” invariably put people in office who stand for very little, and accomplish very little, and excuse it with “at least I’m not the other guy.”

I don’t buy the idea that a change of president is going to fix anything. The mess that we are in appears to be the result of poorly-considered reactions to 9/11, but it certainly seems that these things are institutionalized to such a degree that simply changing the president is not going to make a whole lot of difference. You think that a new president can roll back the stuff that John Ashcroft has done? Apparently, the bulk of the populace thinks that it’s a Good Thing. You think that we can simply pack up and leave Iraq? We’ve not done that yet in any country where we have a military presence.

I guess that I’ve come to feel, to a greater and greater extent, what one of my British friends once told me – no matter who you vote for, the politicians will get in.

Note that I’m really not endorsing either one of the candidates. When I have to choose, I’ll likely vote for the incompetent with experience, rather than the one without. I simply don’t buy this “change is necessarily good” mumbo jumbo, and the “anyone but Bush” camp seems to have skipped one too many history classes.