In January, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the increased involvement was due in part to “a desire among the young for the unvarnished truth.”
Well, kids, good luck with that. Most of us who’ve been around for a couple of more decades have been looking for politicians to provide that, and look what we have now: two presidential candidates who only weeks ago were telling us that this campaign would be about the issues.
Instead, we’re reading that John McCain is too inept to send an e-mail and that Barack Obama consorts with terrorists.
And some wonder why more young people don’t vote.
Our daughter is 18 this year and eligible to vote. She has not registered but says she will soon. She’s not running for office, so I believe her.
Over the past couple of years, our kids have heard my unsolicited opinions on everything political. They know that as with everyone else in life, they should not believe what a politician says. Instead, they should look at what he has done.
Talk is cheap; action is everything.
They’ve heard me talk about how local elections are usually more important to our daily lives than the national contests. Locally, we are deciding who gets to make decisions on traffic, crime reduction, trash pickup and nail parlors.
And just like the national elections, local politicians have no qualms about stretching the truth, failing to admit when they’ve made a mistake and pursuing narrow agendas that do not have the communities’ best interests at heart.
In short, the local candidates are not giving youth what we are told they most want.
They want the truth, and that makes them just like the rest of us.
When you get the truth, you get leaders in Washington who have the courage to tell us they let Wall Street do its own thing for so long because times were good and it seemed like it would go on forever. And because a lot of campaign contributions came from Wall Street.
When you get the truth, you hear that this bailout is exactly that, but not for Joe Sixpack. It’s a bailout for those same campaign donors.
Locally, one of our U.S. congressmen looks like a genius who supports the American middle class, while the other looks like he’s paying back his pals.
As of this writing, on the first full day of Wall Street activity after the bailout, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down almost 400 points.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher voted against the bailout, and Congressman John Campbell voted for it.
There is no spin on this one. We were told the $700 billion was needed to free up credit and get the economy going.
Although no one said it directly, there was most definitely the hint that spending this money would solve all our problems.
And some wonder why more young people don’t vote.
STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.
