You can't live in a democracy and have everything your way. I think sometimes we get all excited about the idea of the "will of the people" somehow assuming that the will of the people is the same as our own. At some unconscious level we may feel that any reasonable person would agree with us and therefore if the people were in charge, things would be governed according to our point of view. I like living in a democracy, but I don't like it that the will of the people elected George W. Bush as president. The majority, at least the second time around, did elect him despite my feeling that it was not in the best interests of most of the people in this country to have him as president.
I see Senator Obama as a far superior leader than Bush or McCain and I think we'd be fortunate indeed to have him elected. I don't, however, expect him to agree with me 100% on everything. I don't expect anyone to agree with me 100% on everything. That's totally unrealistic. Furthermore, it would be grandiose of me to think that I am somehow always right about what would be best for the country or even for myself. Things are way, way too complex for simple solutions and I don't think things in this world will ever be perfect.
In addition, I don't think government can solve all our problems. Many of our problems will need US to solve them, through our ideas and voluntary input. Although I want universal healthcare coverage, for example, I don't feel there will be any government program that will be perfect. I also feel that for our healthcare system to succeed, we need to look at the nature of healthcare that we provide. We face some tough decisions about things like end of life care that will impact healthcare costs and that the government can't legislate for us.
When Senator Obama talks about working across the aisles, it doesn't mean reaching across and dragging all the Republicans to the Democratic side. It means opening up to the other viewpoints, pointing our heads together and making decisions we can all stand behind so that we can get out of the deadlock and move forward. Above all, it means ending the bickering and blaming that only wastes our energy and our resources. We need to arrive at decisions we can all back. In my marriage, we don't always agree and we have to compromise. Once we agree on something (usually a compromise), then we need to be able to stand by the decision as the best we could arrive at to move forward. We have to do the same with our country.
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