Politics

Lately I have had some "discussions" with a friend on FaceBook. She thinks Obama will make a change and will make everything ok. I, on the other hand, don't think it really matters who won. In my opinion the President is really not much more than a puppet. Congress writes the laws, not the president. And in my view people care too much about which president is elected and not enough about which congress person is elected. People can normally spout out at least 2 ro 3 reasons why they vote for this president or that president, but when it comes to congress I don't think most people can even tell me who their congress representatives are, much less what they stand for on different topics.

So this brings up a couple of thoughts:
1) Why don't we know more about our elected officials?
2) Why would anyone want to run for president?

The first one I think is because people are generally too lazy to find out about who their elected officials are and think that everyone else will jsut do it for them.

The second one I think about often. Why would anyone want to become President of the United States?
1) The salary, $400,000/yr, may seem like alot, but compared to other people in high profile jobs it is really pretty small. There are other perks, helicopter/airplane rides as well as a $50,000 expense account.
2) Nobody notices anything you do right, but they do notice everything you do wrong.
3) You have no private life.
4) If you made any mistakes in the past, no matter how small, they will be blown out of proportion and made as if you were the only person to ever have such indiscretions.
5) People want to kill you.

Most of this can be eliminated by just telling the press to STFU. But that won't happen because apparently we have the right to know everything about everyone.

Powerful and smart people don't generally get to where they are by being goodie too shoes. So they will probably have at least one thing that they aren't proud of. so the smartest and best suited for the job will not apply. So you are left with second tier candidates. I am not saying Bush, Clinton or Obama are bad or unqualified people, I jsut think there are probably MUCH better qualified candidates who wouldn't dare run simply because they have a skeleton or 2 in the closet.

OK that wasn't a well thought out as I was hoping, but hopefully you get my point.