Why I support Barak Obama

When the election is brought up and I am asked who I am voting for, few are surprised when I say “Obama, of course.” I don’t think anyone should be surprised, but they are expectant under the wrong conceptions of me. They assume I support Obama because I am young and he is hopeful and it is appealing to me only on the surface. I find this more than mildly insulting. I’ve read that, on average, those who back Obama are more educated than those who back Hillary…so, I’m slightly baffled by their attribution of my political views to my age and associated naivete. I want to set the record straight in a few areas.
First, your political affiliation should not be a question of your age. More importantly, your political affiliation should not be so fierce that prejudices are assumed. At the risk of sound as naïve as I am not, why can’t we all just get along? Please understand, by ‘get along’ I do not mean all agree. I firmly believe that our differences of opinion and debate of such promote education, provoke thought, and force us to reexamine our own positions; the direct result of such is progress. I believe in politics, in life actually, that our greatest strength can be admitting when someone else may be a little more right than we are. Acknowledgement that you are wrong, or just that someone else has a better or more developed idea can advance the world and humanity as we know it. I believe that our world today is in such chaos because we have this room with a big black strip of duct tape down the middle, one side is Republican, one side is Democrat. Some are more left or right than others, and some dare to jump over that line occassionally, and that is the only way we have anything of true value. I support Barack Obama because although he is running as a democrat, I believe he’s going to rip up that tape and shake up the room. I believe that he has the ability to bring balance to our government.
I support Barack Obama, because I agree wholeheartedly with most of his policies and where I disagree I understand his perspective because I have taken the time to research his position. Agreeing with someone and supporting them are not the same and are not always linked. In supporting him, I am saying that I know he has the country’s best interests at heart. I am stating that I know he’s our only hope for revival. America right now is starting to drown ourselves. We have a military that is stretched too thin, and unreasonably so. We have a flailing economy, a healthcare system that is hit or miss, and mostly miss, with those who need it most. We have a government that is increasingly losing the support and just as importantly, the interest, of those citizens it represents. How many of us truly trust the government? I believe we need to get back to the core of our country, to read back the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. What are these men so desperately telling us? I have not met, nor shall I ever meet George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, but something tell s me that these men did not have what we’ve become in their hopes when they wrote, signed, or fought for those documents. They sought to keep us safe from injustice, including that inflicted by ourselves. Focusing on pictures of a candidate in traditional clothing from another culture, or what a friend said, however radical, are not the ideals of government these men commited their lives to. I think if they were here right now, they’d give some of these candidates that look. The look that your father or grandfather gives you when you know you’ve been acting childish and are throwing the blame on others. I believe that Barack Obama will accept the responsibility of the office he’s campaigning for. I believe he’ll accept the good with the bad, and fight for the advancement of our society, and not the growth of his bank account. I believe in his plans for education, of all people I understand the need for action. There is a generation that we are failing in our unwillingness to improve their education. I believe in his plan for Iraq, I don’t think we should have been there to begin with and his plan makes the best of the situation with the immediate actions to correct it. While I understand and truly appreciate the work that is put in to those who make much more money than I ever will, I doubt that they work any harder than I do, and if I’m going to be taxed a certain degree they should be held to the same level. When we make more money, usually into our 30s, and reach that point of wanting to keep more of it and make more of it, we lose sight of the rest of the world. The Conservative Right obviously offers this perk to the more wealthy in society, but I cannot help but hear a voice in my mind with an unmistakably New England accent urging us to ‘ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’. While there are children whose educations are being neglected, elderly who cannot afford their medications, and young men fighting a war they don’t understand, forgive me but I find your abundance of finances that you probably wouldn’t even miss, at the bottom of my political priority list. Which leads me to the main reason I support Barack Obama, I believe, I know, that Barack Obama will put our country as his priority and our citizens as his focus. That is the president’s job, right? I think it is about time we elect a president capable, and willing, to fulfill that job description.