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How to Pick Your Candidate

By Dorian Bensen

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It’s not easy to figure out who to vote for in the presidential election, to say the least. Here's why:

1) There are so many issues floating around this country, first of all, that it’s doubtful you will ever find a candidate who agrees with you on all of them. No matter what, you are going to have to pick and choose and compromise.

2) It’s next to impossible to ever discern with certainty why a candidate is taking the stand that he (usually a he) is. Is it because he really believes in his opinion? Or is it because someone is paying him via campaign funding to take their opinion and make it his own? Finding out the answer on all of these issues at hand would require an amount of research that, let’s face it, most Americans simply don’t have time or resources to undertake.

3) It’s so much easier to care about other things. We all have a million things going on in our lives. Politicians get to worry about politics at work. We have to worry about spreadsheets and clients and deadlines and stuff. And then we’ve got friends and family and spouses and dates and parties and movies and books. Politics is such a dull word in the midst of all this. Or so it so often seems.

4) Everyone knows that campaign promises often don’t live past inauguration day. This makes it hard to care about them.

5) The winner doesn’t necessarily win, as we all now know. This makes it even more difficult to make yourself care who you vote for.

6) I don’t know about you, but I have never had anything in common with aging stodgy white men in suits. And that is all I ever have to choose from.  Again, this makes it difficult

7) Candidates are not ever very good at being straightforward. You ask them what they had for breakfast, and they answer that that’s a very interesting question, but the real issue here is whether or not that other guy meant it when he said that television has become littered with violence. What?

In conclusion, it’s a really tough decision. So let me help you out.

Don't vote for Bush.

See how simple it can be?

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Dorian Bensen is a writer living in New York City.  Please direct comments to [email protected].

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