Sick Of The Election? I Love ‘Em!

OK, I admit it. I might be the only one, or one of only a very few, that loves elections, particularly Presidential elections.

Oh, I don't love everything about it, not by a long shot. I don't like that they seem to go on and on and on. I'm thinking it'll be about a week, maybe two, before the news channel's begin coverage of the 2014 "mid-term" elections, and about 3 weeks until we begin coverage of the Presidential race 2016.

And I'm not crazy about all the money that's spent on them. What did I hear, this year over $1 billion was spent in the election process? I know, a lot of it was spent from the so-called "outside groups", the SuperPac's and all that. But it was still a lot of dough to elect a President. Occasionally I wonder how many kids that would feed. But, as they say, it is what it is. Money is free speech and all that.

But I still love it for a number of reasons.

First, I love the history of it. I'm not an American History expert, no, I'm a long way from being that. But I do love American history, political history, presidential history. I think, largely, George, Ben, John, Thomas, James, Alexander and the rest of the founding boys got it right. While this "electoral college" thing can be a bit confusing, it works. (Although I think a strong argument could be made that it needs to be modified...regional electoral areas instead of state-by-state?). But overall, it works. And the history of elections is fascinating.

Just for fun sometime, look up (Google, if you will) the Adams-Jefferson race. Check out the Lincoln race in 1860 when he wasn't even on any of the Southern ballots. Check out the 4 elections where the popular vote winner didn't win the presidential race. Oh, it see who all who by a landslide and who won by a whisker.

Then, I love the fact that we have to elect a new President every 8 years. We can't have the same guy (or woman?) for more than 8 years. You can thank good 'ol George Washington for that one. He was President 2 terms and could have stayed President til the day he died. But he saw that, no, not a good thing, too close to a monarchy like they had in Great Britain at the time. New blood is not only good, but essential and needed for the democracy. (I know, I kow, what about FDR? Wasn't he in, like, forever? No, but close...after him, they went ahead and made it Constitutional..no more than 2 terms thank you and goodbye.)

And the other thing I love about elections? It's this: After all the campaigning, all the arguing, all the name calling, all the money, all the negative ads, all the hand wringing, sweating, cursing, "he's the worst, no he's the worst"...after all that and a lot more, guess what?

The sun came up today. The world is turning. Life goes on. We don't have a dictator. We didn't have a military coup. Our government wasn't overthrown, burned down, destroyed.

Some are happy with the guy who won. Some are unhappy with the guy who won. But the plain fact? We all won. We were able to vote. And now we're able to complain.

And in 4 years we do it all again. Thank God for that.

Bring on the next election!