The average voter

I’m not sure I’m the kind of voter the Founding Fathers had in mind.
Now, I don’t know much about the Founding Fathers. I only got halfway through Ben Franklin’s autobiography, I don’t remember most of what I learned in high school history, and I think most of what I know about them stems from the pictures on dollar bills.

But I can’t imagine that the kinds of guys who would found a country based on lofty political philosophies really wanted people like me voting, even if they claimed to advocate “democracy.”

And I don’t mean they wouldn’t want me voting because I’m a woman, as a friend recently pointed out to me when I made this statement. The fact is, I know little about foreign policy or economics, or almost anything else besides a few social issues, and on the handful of occasions I’ve watched

C-SPAN I have either been wildly confused or found a quick cure for my insomnia.
I also have been known to be a member of that crowd of people you find in Wal-Mart on Saturday afternoon – a group whose sanity you assume must be nonexistent because you see that their purchases while standing in line include medium-length pink wool tube socks and plastic snack-packs of corn. Maybe I even stood in line behind 13 other people to buy such important items. If this group of citizens doesn’t make everyone question American democracy, I don’t know what can.
But the scary thing is that I actually am interested in the elections, and I plan on voting in them.

I plan on voting in them, if only because someone from Obama’s campaign came into the place I used to work, insisting that I register to vote while I was the only one there. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her I think my vote doesn’t really count, which is true. Nonetheless, I probably will vote since I’m registered – and I think I’m actually going to branch out this time and vote for a real candidate instead of the random write-in that I did last presidential election.

But in all seriousness, I’ve been following the elections fairly well. I’ve been watching Obama’s speeches religiously, paying careful attention to the literary and narrative devices he uses that set him apart in being able to keep my attention more than the other candidates.

I think I’d be happy if he were in the White House because I’m a language fanatic and his speeches would give me at least four years’ worth of material to chew on without being bored out of my mind. And at least when he does spin information, it requires a bit more of a challenge to dissect than McCain.

All this is to say that I’m probably your average America voter: too lazy for what the Founding Fathers likely intended us to be, vaguely smarter than we seem in the Wal-Mart check-out line and interested in the elections for the wrong reasons. But hey, that’s democracy.