Home Stretch

October is drawing to a close, the debates are over, and we are little more than a week away from the end of the 2012 presidential race.

The closer November 6^th draws, the shriller the rhetoric gets.  Both candidates are hurling jabs at each other’s record and respective economic programs, while their acolytes in the chattering classes argue bitterly over everything from tax policy to healthcare to whether the administration acted appropriately on intelligence related to the Benghazi consulate attack. There has also been the inevitable pop culture spillover: Conservatives are up in arms over enfant auteur Lena Dunham’s suggestive pro-Obama video, and a clutch of concertgoers walked out on Madonna after she urged them to vote for the president during a performance.

The polls show we are just as divided as we’ve been for the past dozen years…Obama and Romney are tied at 48% among registered voters according to Gallup.  Ideologues aside, most of us will vote for the perceived lesser evil.  The other major contest, however, is the one most people aren’t paying attention to: the race for control of both houses of Congress.  But 468 separate races—for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and the 33 Class I seats in the Senate—don’t hold nearly the media sway as the personality-driven choice we make every four years for the top job. 

We ignore the congressional elections because they seem irrelevant to daily concerns.  Perhaps they are in the larger scheme.  One could argue the same of the presidential race; we only believe it significant because of the attendant media saturation.  Our apathy is literally systemic.  The reason we don’t participate in politics, save to vote, is because we are effectively cut out of the policy making process.  At the national level (and at the state level too), the “iron triangle” of interest groups, bureaucrats, and legislators forms policy.  The things that affect us most directly—public school quality, whether there are enough cops on the street, and how soon the potholes on your street get fixed—are governed by largely anonymous local officials whose names we either skip on the ballot or vote for blindly without recognition.   

All the same, if voting is our only role within the existing system we should make the most of it.  As an engaged citizen, I’ll devote my efforts over the next few days to urging my neighbors and coworkers to take charge of their future and cast their ballot.  Starting now.  Let’s see, let me bring up my friends’ numbers on my phone here and…hmmm, it’s Sunday, I shouldn’t really bother them…oh, who am I kidding?  Game 4 of the World Series is on…can’t miss that.  I’ll make my calls tomorrow, sometime, maybe. 

Go Giants!