By John Ramsey Miller

I’m tickled shitless the Presidential elections are over. I despise the process. As an old advertising practitioner I saw the election race as one big three card Monty game fueled by a billion plus dollars and piloted by armies of self interested suits. Call me cynical because I am. I used to get angry, but I’m older now, and I get to say, “I told you so” …a lot.

I hate the constant ads, the barrage of invasive robo phone calls from urging me to dislike this candidate, or to love that one, or to believe the worst or the best small minds could come up with to wrestle my vote from me by any means necessary. I resent the fact that a president is selected in what is no more than a long and tiresome beauty pageant. I resent that we are just buying one product over another based on largely inaccurate, untruthful, and manipulative ads. We are asked to choose a leader the way we are asked to decide between a Ford and a Chevrolet. And no politician ever does what he or she says they will do to get elected. “They” are all always going to give us “change”, but what we get is the same sack of wind spray-painted a different color.

My kids supported Obama because of his promise of affordable health care. I told them to listen to what he was actually saying. He said that he believes everybody “ought” to have it¬¬, never promising that he would “give” them affordable health care. I told them as soon as he was elected he would start explaining why he couldn’t come through on most of his “promises”. I told them that he’d say something like, “Due to the failed policies of the W guy, I can’t give you what I said I could. (This is always the case because a politician “never” admits they made a mistake or lied). Maybe I can do what I said I’d do in my “second” term.” And it would have been just as true with McCain. I’m not a psychic, I’ve seen it over and over. Politicians rarely make good on their promises because that old reality thing gets in their way. If you buy a product that doesn’t do what it advertised, you can take it back. With defective or non-performing politicians you’re stuck with them for years.

I’ve known quite a few politicians, and none are in danger of becoming my close friends. I think you have to be sociopathic to be a successful politician–-to want to rule supreme over some little corner (or large corner) of the world. And I don’t think it really matters all that much who the president is since they are all owned by the people they owe who are going to be calling the shots, or actually steering their course for four or eight years. It isn’t that they don’t do some good, because most do some good even if it’s incidental. After all it’s necessary to please some people in order to stay in office and keep gathering a power base.

The truth is I didn’t vote for Obama, but I am willing to support him as long as he doesn’t betray the people who did vote for him as well as those of us who didn’t think he was the right choice of the two we ended up with. I’m proud that we have a black President, and I’m praying he can impress this old cynic by governing in the best interests of all Americans, not to the detriment of those who didn’t support him due to philosophical differences. I am a centrist, which is a schizophrenic blending of liberal and conservative philosophies. I can live with, and even support, a liberal president. All I can say is I’ll be watching what he does and who he hangs with, and whether he can reach across the aisle and govern from the center, because he won’t have to do that unless he wants to be the president who’s better than the last one, not the same one in a different suit.

Yes we’re the greatest nation on earth, maybe in history, but I truly believe that America is great despite her leaders, not because of them.

Oh, yeah, this is suppose to be about writing. Okay–– All of this watching and listening to politicians gives us (authors) great material, insight into the human animal––especially villains, and into the human condition as well as the state of our country.