Election Day Looms

So it’s Election Day eve—an impossibly long campaign process is nearly at an end. Unless we find Clarence Thomas counting hanging chads in December, we should conclude this electoral mélange by midnight tomorrow. I suppose I should be apprehensive. Perhaps I should be cowering behind locked doors, fearful of what may happen, regardless of who is elected president, state representative, or county coroner. The doomsday anarchists seem convinced that Armageddon is overtaking us in the rearview mirror. And just now, the governor called me to solicit my vote for his candidate for representative, the seventh campaign call tonight.

Elections are important. So is voting. It’s one of the most important rights we possess. Many died to preserve it. And there are some pretty important issues at stake—national security, the economy, energy policy, and the need for a playoff system in college football. And let’s face it—there is a pretty good chance that a combination of ignorant and greedy voters, the influence of special interest groups, and a nearly-unanimous demand for national change will create a worsening climate for businesses, the middle class, or a strong foreign policy in the near future. And I think we will see an erosion of health care and an increase in energy prices.

Our system of government is the best in the world. And our elected officials are certainly accessible when we need them. But as former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller once told me, the two party system of government is broken. Politicians spend too much time working at the bequest of their party caucus and far too little time listening to constituents.

But I will not spend this Election Day hunkered down with my shotgun waiting for the violent hordes. And I certainly will not assume that Micheal Stipe is correct and it is, “the end of the world as we know it.” But I do feel fine. I place my faith in just a few things; God, democracy, my close friends, and myself. First of all, I know that God is in control. “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1 John 4:4) And I know that democracy will prevail. It has through troubled times before, and it will again. And certainly, I believe in me. I can’t see the Russians from here, and I don’t have a federal subsidy to manufacture wooden arrows, but I’m convinced that I’m more capable than anyone in Washington of deciding my future or ensuring that it’s a success.

Now, how many teams should make the NCAA football playoffs?