My Last Words on the Election, Hopefully

Virginia Postrel offers up her decision making on whom to vote for for president in "How Can You Vote for a Guy Like That?". She has a good point that kind of sums up why I am so bemused by the vitriol this election is creating. Virginia, like myself, never invested the emotion, positive or negative, into Bush that many other people have. Her closing paragraph:

Voting is an expressive activity, but it need not be emotional. Andrew Sullivan's invocation of "The deep emotional bond so many of us formed with the president back then" does not apply to me. Bush leaves me cold and always has. I never wanted to hang out with him, so I don't take our policy differences personally. I never idolized his leadership, so I don't feel he's failed me. He gets my vote in part because I don't identify with him. He's just a hired hand, and he's better than the alternative.

Over this past year, I have often jumped into a political fray on the side of Bush. Not that I am particularly enamored with the guy or his positions. Largely it is because of the lack of any philosophical consistency on the part of the opposition. The tactic seems to be to throw everything that anyone can find objectionable about Bush at him and hope it stains him in the eyes of at least a few people. The criticisms tell me nothing about what the opposition, namely Kerry and the DNC, finds truly objectionable.

As someone who knows that his candidate, Libertarian Michael Badnarik, is going to lose, I have been allowed a certain distance. And because I am not voting for Bush, I think that I make it clear that I am not pro-Bush in my defenses of him. I am, instead, anti-anti-Bush. My arguments are for searching for consistency in what a candidate and a voter wants this election. I want that to be a positive (My guy is good because...) rather than a negative (Anybody but...).

Neither side is evil.