After Iowa Jitters

Silly Season -- otherwise known as the election cycle -- is well in swing now, with the New Hampshire primaries approaching.

After Iowa, which Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won on the Democratic and Republican sides respectively, there was the usual prognostication, ecstasy, and in some cases, sorrow as the camps moved east to the first true primary of the cycle. I'm very pleased that two candidates that I gave pub to came out on top -- obligatory pat on the back here -- but I'm realistic in knowing that the road to the nomination in both parties is long and hard. For that reason, I am keeping these candidates victories with a measure of caution.

Still, there is some reason for optimism -- especially on the Democratic side -- as some non-establishment candidates are having some success and gaining some momentum. It's up to voters around the country to either see or not, the positives of the candidates and vote accordingly. Of course, rational thought -- an assumption that is more often false than not -- what voters should rely on as they make their choices.

Unfortunately, I have little faith in the American voter for a number of reasons, but for one reason more than any other.

Listening to NPR this morning, there were individuals being interviewed about their presidential preferences and what some of these citizens were saying gives me pause that the country has learned anything since the election of the Cowboy President. In fact, one gentleman said that he was unsure whom he was going to vote for on the GOP side, until he figured out who was "more like him" and someone whom he didn't perceive as being "substantially better than [him]," which I assume to mean not substantially brighter, not an "elite." A common guy.

Like George Bush, the common, everyday president who's ruined this country?

It's this search for "a common guy" that concerns me. Now, I'm not suggesting that no one "regular" could be a good president. But let's be honest and realistic. Running for president and getting millions of people to vote for you makes you a pretty extraordinary person -- or at least you should be.

I don't want my president to be the kind of guy I run into at the neighborhood bar. Hell, that's half the reason I don't actually go to the neighborhood bar! I don't want my president to mangle words. I don't want my president to be offensive to virtually every culture outside his or her own. I don't want a president whose idea of foreign travel is a trip to California.

In other words, I kinda want my president to be the smartest person available at the time, bar none.

We've experimented with the dullard, and we see what that's gotten us.

So, you'd have thought people had learned a lesson. No, apparently not. There are quite a few citizens that are hellbent on repeating history, even though that history has been way less than positive. It's these people, who are insecure about their own ability -- or lack thereof -- that put the rest of us in jeopardy indirectly.

I'd like to pass a message to these people: get over yourself.

Before you cast that ballot, think about it. Would you vote for anyone that you'd say was as smart or experienced as yourself? If not, you might not want to vote for that guy who's going to sit down with you at the bar, or anyone like him.