on voting

I’m not one to wax on politics, but I began having some thoughts back in January and even before, when one heard a lot of the farthest right of evangelical leaders saying things about how they could not support or vote for John McCain for reasons of conscience. I did some thinking on that.

At one point I mentioned to my brother Tom my consideration of the strategy of simply not voting. He pointed out to me that (in my paraphrase) no one has laid down their life for my right to refrain from voting, but plenty have laid down their lives to protect my right to vote; and that further, I am not now, never have been and never will be presented with the option of voting for the perfect candidate; I am presented with selecting the person closest to my values.

As I thought about that I went back to the talk about "voting their conscience", especially this year among the conservative opponents of McCain. And I realized that elections are not and never were about, or designed for, "expressing one's conscience"; they are about selecting an imperfect candidate from a field of two or more imperfect candidates for the office.

The final reflection came as I considered (spurred by a op-ed piece in the Houston Chronicle) that Reagan (whom all self-described conservatives seemed to be looking for this year) was the one who authored the so- called 11th commandment – “thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow republican”...words that many of McCain's critics seemed to have forgotten during the primary season - along with the fact that Reagan himself compromised with the other party on a number of issues both before and during his presidency.

McCain's not the guy I would have chosen from an ideal list of potential candidates, nor from the smaller number of actual candidates who were available on January 1 of this year, whose number were fewer still when the Texas primary occurred. I would not have voted for him in a primary under the best of circumstances, but he'll all but certainly have my vote in November, because for any disagreements I have with him, in my opinion he represents less danger to the long term character of the nation than the candidate of the other party - whomever that will be.

Just a thought. As we used to say on a list I was part of for many years, I got my flameproof jammies on in case I receive some blistering comments.