I have never voted for a winner.

I have done a small amount of blog reading in the last little while, and it's a little strange. The category that seems most common seems to be a mix of satire and self-righteousness, which leads me into my post.

I have never managed to vote for the winner in any presidential election. My first opportunity to vote involved William Jefferson Clinton, and I decided to vote against him because he was getting sucked off in the oval office, and decided that that wasn't 'sexual relations'. Evidently it's just a mouth hug, as the comedians say. I voted for Bob Dole, because he seemed like a good man, with an honorable military history and a tendency to do the right thing. According to the media, he was too 'wooden', but that just appealed to me, because I'm a bit 'wooden' myself. I'm sure that personal charisma plays some part in running a country, but I don't care for that part. All it gets you is mouth hugs.

At my next opportunity, it was Gore Vs. Bush, and I decided that George Bush wasn't wooden enough. In fact, he struck me as a garrulous father with a hickory stick behind his back.

Third time isn't the charm. After the events of 9/11, along with the inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, and the fact that we were essentially spending billions of dollars to ship soldiers within range of 50 dollar roadside bombs, I had had enough of the war. Although John Kerry bugged me a lot, I had to vote for him. Either George Bush misled the American people into the war with Iraq, or he was duped into it by his staff. Either way, he deserved to lose his job.

In 2008, I went to the polling booth and put my mark in for John McCain, for very similar reasons to why I voted for Bob Dole. I think I will always tend to lend support to a military man over anyone else. I'm not sad that Barack won, but I didn't really keep good track of the presidential candidates this year. I voted for John McCain, because I really wished I had the chance in 2000, and I wasn't going to miss it now.

I wonder if it would have really made a difference. If we had elected Bob Dole, and Clinton would have been kicked out early, would we have remained on track to pay off the deficit? Clinton was actually a kickass president, if you can discount his one small character flaw.

What would have happened, if Al Gore had become president in place of George Bush? I think we can agree that our planes would probably still be doing patrols through a no-fly-zone over Iraq, and Saddam would still be taunting us. There would be no need of a national monument commemorating the dead in the Iraq war, but we would probably still have the unalterable reality of the skyline changes in New York.

I don't want to think about what would have happened with John Kerry in charge of the United States, but let's face it, a lot of contractors would have lost their jobs in Iraq as we pulled out, probably causing a massive economic slump. oh wait... that happened anyway. Maybe it would have been ok.


Well, I think I got a little self-righteous in there, but I didn't master the satire portion. Better luck to me next time.