Our Political Swat Team

A neighbor of whom I am rather fond and keep in touch with occasionally by email responded to my blog article about my voting for Hillary with a bit of “disbelief” that I would make a choice like that! Perhaps, he also wondered at my selection this early in the game.

Oh well I hadn’t expected to win any popularity contests with my bold statement of support for this particular candidate except, maybe, from some of the diehard Democrats and, likely, from the feminists among them.

I wasn’t quite certain how to immediately respond to this friend neighbor’s challenge right off.  But then I read a CNN article wherein the reporter, Ms. Ashley Killough, described Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as hitting “back at potential GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio over  the Florida senator’s charge over…..”

Well you fill in the blanks.

The topic could be any comment made by another who is one’s political opponent. The subject matter changes, the manner of combat rarely, if ever does. In other words Walker took a swat at Rubio and soon Rubio will swat him back.

Thus I come back to Hillary.

We definitely, in my opinion, don’t need our politics to be handled like a SWAT team going after armed criminals in the guise of other presidential contenders.

The deal, as I see it, is who is going to do the best job throughout the campaign to even appear capable of leading us to overcome the viral polarization in our country and help our very sick society heal.

I don’t necessarily trust Hillary. She’s a politician. That means she’s a game player capable of the dirtiest maneuvers to get what she is after. But I don’t expect to find any other among them upon whom bestowing my trust would bring me comfort to any greater degree. After all politics is politics and anyone who tr2usts a politician is a fool in my book.

But Hillary has, by this time, developed a bit of grace and diplomacy; the skill of a veteran who knows how to get in the cage with the other large predators and come out relatively unscathed. So, while I certainly cannot say that I trust her, I am betting on her finesse.

Not meaning that I think she is lily white. It’s just that I think she has the skill to cross the great congressional divide without being decimated, manage our international diplomacy -- and -- G-d help us, achieve a greater unity among the citizens of our country.

I was proud of Hillary’s representing us, even with her flaws, as Secretary of State. So I feel confident I would respect her manner in representing this country at home and abroad as our president.  This would be such a relief that I cannot even speak it!

Still I can always change my mind as the campaign game plays itself out. But from where I sit now, with lots of organizational experience of my own, I think Hillary just might be able to do the bridge building we need.  All I see of the others candidates so far is more bullying and provoking polarization. I don't believe it needs to be this way.

I also don't think Hillary should lose just because she is a woman either!

I want someone who can help me hold my head up high, again, as an American.

What I don’t want is a president, even a potential one, who starts off his/her campaign on the attack of the other candidates as ENEMIES that he must take dead or alive, as if he/she were a SWAT team member! 

For all its imperfections the America I know and love is not yet a war zone! And, that’s not what our election process should look like here either, as if a bomb threat were lurking at every corner!

Anyway since our last presidential election I changed my voter registration from Democrat to Independent.

I don’t belong to any party anymore and that’s how I will make my voting decision; any which way when I get to the polls!