Be it ever so humble, there's no place like a presidential debate

Ok-I think I have figured out why it is that as much as I like certain candidates when I see their speeches, or read their webpages, inevitably by the time it comes for a presidential election, I am thoroughly disgusted by all the candidates after seeing the debates. I can't stand people patting themselves on the back.

If I could just vote based on seeing a resume and getting an idea of where a candidate stands on the issues that would be great. I know we need debate just so we can find out when someone's ideas are impractical or that they don't deal well under pressure. And we're now a TV nation and to our detriment our leaders have to come over well as actors too. Unfortunately the process of rallying support and getting your party's nomination takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. And we get to see the debates with the theme of pretty much every question being "Tell us why you're better than your opponent". So you literally get years of listening to them repeat the story of the time they spearheaded a campaign that saved the world's endangered snarkles and that the Minister of Magic called them the next Albus Dumbledore. Whoopty do!!

Ok- back to real world examples. Then we get the joy of seeing Hilary Clinton backtrack and say that she changed the world during her 8 years as the wife of the president......I guess she's hoping enough baby boomers now have alzheimers and can't remember her claims at the time that she wasn't doing anything major as the president's wife or overstepping her bounds as a person that NO ONE VOTED FOR. Either we were all right and she did all kinds of stuff that no one wanted her to do at the time and lied about it........or she's lying now and she never really did much besides try to really support for Bill's universal health care reform.....oh wait I mean HER universal health care reform.....no wait??? We're back to square one. But that's OK- square one is me disliking Hilary and it doesn't really matter. All I need to know is she thinks she's empowering women by using her philandering husband to get to the top. Case closed thank you very much.

On the topic of self-aggrandization. I had the joy of reading through some resumes recently and my favorite person that I would never hire listed his accomplishments on his resume. Apparently he made "brilliant" changes to his company's internal email system. I think he used the word "amazing" in another part of the resume. WOW.

Where on earth do people come off calling themselves brilliant or influential or a genius on their resumes? Isn't that a designation that should come from an outside party. I mean maybe you can list under your accomplishments "Received title of The GOD of I.T. in 1997 from Wired magazine" or something. Then you don't need to call yourself an deity- someone else did it for you. But to call yourself brilliant? Do you think you can really put stuff like that on your resume and as long as you speak in third person no one can tell? ICK.

Ok- back to the topic of politicians. I feel bad for anyone in politics. I think the reason people seem to love people from outside politics is that they are more uncomfortable spouting out how great they are at every opportunity. If I had to walk around talking about how great I was for two full years I would be a different person. And imagine if you had gone through multiple campaigns over many years. You almost wouldn't even have time to do more amaaaazing things so you can talk about how amaaaazing you are. What a tragedy.

It's hard to see how a good person could ever survive entering into that lifestyle. I can see wanting to make change and do good, but living through the campaigning sounds like the worst torture I can imagine. I hate my own birthday parties. I can't even imagine the horror of going to a "Please Please Please Like Erica the Most" party every day. Heave. Shudder.

I'm glad it's them and not me. But right now it's hard for me to like them. And then it's hard to like myself for not wanting to participate in my own country's political process. AAHHHHHH!!

Then I just remind myself of how messed up other countries are and I can force myself to try to pick the candidate who ooogs me out the least. I have it way better off with these people than in a country where I get killed for trying to go vote. Or where the votes are super obviously tampered with. Or where I get no vote at all cause the military controls the country or a dictator or something.

SO God bless America and it's candidates and preserve them from believing their own hype.