Political waste

Who would you rather watch a football game with: Barack Obama or John McCain? Who would make a better schoolteacher for your children? These are just a sample of some of the ridiculous polls that are circulating about our presidential candidates. With the election just five weeks away, these kinds of absurd polls are distracting us from the most important question: Who will make the best president?

At a time when we should be using polls to evaluate who would make the better leader of our country, the Internet and news sources have been overtaken by political garbage. Would you have one of your football buddies be president of the free world? Not many of us would.

So why must we take polls on useless information? In some way it’s the American culture of feeding off of useless information, which helps make tabloids sell so well. The information is completely futile and manages to distract us from any real problems. So we get sucked into wondering if a candidate’s basketball skills will improve his diplomacy.

I most recently saw a stream of cluttered polling on Yahoo. Apparently, they are paying people to harass voters into stating their preferred candidate, then listing them by groups. Are you a pet owner? What’s your skin color? They must be asking these questions, since they are listing explicitly, “Racial views steer some white dems away from Obama,” on their Election ’08 Political Pulse.

As if this type of polling isn’t bad enough, Yahoo has reduced itself to asking questions that won’t help us pick the candidate to jump-start our dismal economy, but instead is asking questions such as “Which candidate is the most likeable?”

People must not base their political decision, which does in fact affect the outcome of the whole election, simply on the likability factor. It’s great if you find your president likeable, but shouldn’t that be taken into account after looking over qualifications? No smart employer would hire someone who wasn’t qualified for the job based solely on looks or likeability. It risks their time and money.

As voters, we have the same responsibility. Except that voting in the wrong candidate not only affects our time and money, but also our peace of mind and our living situations as a whole.

On some level, people want to believe they know their president as if he were their next-door neighbor. In that way, these polls capture the image of days gone by, where our presidents had invisible skeletons, and exhibited the correct outcome of a nuclear family. While it might be great to have a president who would be wonderful heading your child’s classroom, is that really what it’s all about?

Think about it. Would you pass on a candidate who might not host the best Super Bowl parties, when he would be the best person to make a quick decision when it comes to your safety? Would you pass up someone who prefers dogs to cats, even if he holds the key to stabilizing the economy?

Of course you wouldn’t. While the dream of having a crystal-clean, amiable and charismatic president who may let you borrow a cup of sugar from time to time is extremely noble, at the end of the day, you want the president who will do the job well.

These types of polls remind me of the mudslinging political ads featured all over the Internet. In the same way, they aren’t really helping people make an educated decision in selecting a leader, but making outrageous accusations and taking away from the real issue at hand. On November 4, we will choose who will take care of us for the next four years. Our president is supposed to guide, help and represent us.

Political ads are not the best source in helping us make this hugely important decision.

November 4 is fast approaching. In this election, as in all elections, every person’s vote counts toward the overall outcome. We shouldn’t be basing such important decisions off of sport preference, beer preference or religious preference.

When the time comes to cast your ballot, vote for the candidate who best represents you and your country. That’s the whole point, after all. If we can learn to ignore the junk, as well as political mudslinging, we might actually be able to find a real gem of a politician.