Focus on issues, not distant past

Amy Satterwhite

Lately, very few of the presidential candidates’ issues we’ve been asked to ponder have had anything to do with the real world. I personally don’t care that much how many Purple Hearts John Kerry received or if a report about President Bush’s National Guard service was wrong due to fabrications.

Military service and the way one portrays himself are indications of character, but as far as I’m concerned, those things happened a long time ago – too long ago for me to care too much. Kerry may have seemed unpatriotic at one point in his life, but how much worse is that than Bush’s partying days?

Perhaps we should be asking the following questions:

• How is it that two parents who work two full-time jobs and have college degrees qualify for the free and reduced lunch program?

• How is it that a man who has been working the same job for 40 years helping to make millions for the good of the company is afraid his job will be lost to someone in Mexico or China?

• Why does that guy’s son feel fortunate because the boss fired someone else instead of him as the jobs flowed overseas? And how does it feel to walk around on what must be borrowed time?

• Why does it cost a small fortune to spend the night at the hospital for fairly routine procedures?

• If you turn over a tag on an article of clothing you expect to be made in America, e.g., Oshkosh B’gosh of Oshkosh, Wis., will you be surprised to find it is not?

These are the things affecting real people – people who think it is ridiculous to spend so much money on dog and pony show political conventions or dig skeletons out of 30-year-old closets. They don’t have much patience for this kind of bickering when they’re wondering how they’re going to pay the next month’s bills with few options on the horizon.

It is terribly discouraging the best question members of the national media can think of is if the candidates have been less than forthright about their military service.

But if they persist in raising these types of questions for too much longer, perhaps they might want to question the accuracy or completeness of military records themselves.

Anyone who has had to get two rounds of shots from the military can attest the military’s record keeping is less than ideal. I know plenty of people who got burned with two rounds of shots. It’s not a conspiracy – some bozo who probably just barely passed the military entrance test simply lost them.

If I were running for national office, I would be frightened of what people might find in my record. Would they find a copy of the letter the Army sent me that inquired where I was while I was in basic training? Would my response – a desperate claim that I was, in fact, in basic training – be included?

The political science people have been teaching that if anything will decide the election, it will be the economy. Perhaps that old adage has changed a little since Sept. 11 and people will seriously consider the state of national security in addition to the economy. I know I am.

But whatever one’s position, one thing is clear: the election is less than two months away and we’re just now recovering from these records discussions. And every minute the national press spends digging into old issues means the real issues never get talked about and the middle class loses once again.

Given that the public has been subjected to precious weeks of discussions about this ridiculous subject, the final question should be, and it’s surely one others around the world are asking themselves: How well prepared are we to decide who leads this country for the next four years?

Amy Satterwhite is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at citynews@southernstandard.com.