If I Could Moderate a Presidental Debate...

I am going to preface this post and say that while I do not consider myself a “political” person, I take my civic duty to elect our nation’s highest office seriously. I am a registered Democrat, but I believe strongly in listening to every candidate’s point-of-view before making my decision about whom to give my vote. For this reason, the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates have been of particular interest to me.

I usually do not post things of this nature on this blog, and that is a deliberate effort on my part. When I began blogging, I had one purpose in mind, and that was (and still is) to document Colin’s childhood and to have a place to vent my frustrations about the roller coaster that is motherhood. Yes, I am a “Mommy Blog” and I’m okay with that.

I decided to go ahead and write this post, though, for a couple of reasons. Namely, because, in doing so, I will be able to highlight some very important issues that we, both as a family and as a nation, are facing right now. Should Colin ever decide later in life to peruse through my ramblings, I would hope that this would help him understand a little better the way of the world when he was too young to remember it. Secondly, I am choosing to make this post because thinking about yesterday’s debate kept me up last night and I need to get this out of my brain.

Okay…all that being said. If I could moderate a Presidential debate it would be a short one, I’d have one question:

I am a 32 year old wife and mother to a 4-year old. I consider myself very blessed. My husband and I both work full-time, in jobs that we like, and we both enjoy a fair amount of job security. We have health insurance, and are managing to put away a little bit of money for retirement. In today’s economy there are certainly some who are worse off than we are; however we still struggle to make ends meet.

When considering how I will vote, I first ask myself, “Am I better off today than I was when the current administration took office?” This election, my answer to that question has been a resounding “No.”

My husband and I would love to have another child in the near future. While we are covered by a health insurance plan, our premium and out-of-pocket costs have significantly increased during the last couple of years. Under our current plan, we cannot afford the deductible and co-insurance payments that would be necessary for maternity care and the hospital stay to give birth.

Even if we could afford the medical costs, we are paying so much more now to put food on the table, gas in the cars, and for the utilities and maintenance on our home, that we could not afford the cost of daycare for an infant. And, while I would love to be a stay-at-home-mom, we simply cannot afford to loose half of our income.

Our 4-year old will be starting kindergarten soon. We can barely scrape together some extra money to put aside in savings for emergency purposes. Right now, putting aside money to pay for his college education (and, yes, he will have a college education one way or another) just isn’t happening.

I don’t want to hear any more about one candidate or another’s voting record. Taken out of context, that information means nothing to me.

I don’t want to hear about what a great bi-partisan champion you have been, or listen to you name-drop all of your cronies in Washington I don’t care whether you’ve agreed or disagreed with the leadership of your party. I don’t want to hear the word “Maverick”.

Personally, I don’t really care about your views on foreign policy. I know it’s important. I’m certain that you both can agree that the current administration has severely tarnished the United State’s reputation internationally. I’m also certain that, whichever of you gets elected, you will do your best to fix that reputation. I know you both would go about doing that in different ways. Right now, though, I don’t want to hear a litany of all of the foreign places you have visited. You don’t have to prove to me how many foreign leaders’ names you can correctly pronounce.

Right now, what I do want to know is this, and please be specific. I’ll give you as long as you need to answer. As President, what policies will you enact, what programs will you implement, what will you personally do so that, four years from now, as we face another election, when I ask myself “Am I better off now than I was when the current administration took office?” I will be able to answer, “Yes.”

In my asking this question, as you may have guessed from reading, I would be directing it mainly toward John McCain. I have a pretty good idea of what Senator Obama’s answer would be. He’s been pretty straight-forward in laying out his agenda from the beginning. I haven’t gotten the same from Senator McCain. I know he says that he isn’t going to follow and maintain the same policies that “W” has for the last eight years. But, I haven’t heard exactly and specifically how he’s going to be different. I’ve heard a lot about how experienced he is and what he’s done in the past, but I haven’t heard a lot about what he plans for the future. I know he favors off-shore drilling and nuclear power development, but he hasn’t said how he plans on going about implementing those ideas. Senator Obama keeps telling us that McCain favors a tax plan that would grant billions of dollars in tax incentives to large corporations including big oil companies. That doesn’t sit very well with me, and I don’t hear John McCain clarifying or correcting what Barack Obama is saying. Maybe I’m supposed to already know those things about John McCain’s view. Maybe if I followed politics more closely I would know them. But the fact is that I don’t. And, from what I’ve heard in talking with other folks, they don’t know either. Isn’t that what the campaign trail is supposed to be about? Getting your message out to the masses? I think the “Straight Talk Express” has gotten off track somewhere. If Senator McCain would start talking straight-forwardly about his platform and policies, I’d be happy to listen.

Please don’t think that I’m letting Senator Obama off easily here. He’s done his share of skirting around questions to steer topics toward what he wants to talk about. Obama has also done his share of calling out John McCain’s voting record and slipping in little jabs here and there. But, through all of that, Senator Obama has also managed to sprinkle in clear cut goals and objectives for his administration should he with the election. Listening to him gives me hope that things can, and will, change for the better. I don't get that same sense of hope from listening to John McCain. In a nutshell, that’s why this mamma is voting for Obama.