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Waste Your Vote
 If
you don’t like the choice between George W. Bush and John
Kerry, there’s always me.  Yes, I’m
available. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve put off active
campaigning because I don’t want to peak too early. You can write
my name in.
But won’t that be wasting
your vote? No, voting for Bush or Kerry is wasting your vote. In fact,
voting itself is wasting your vote. If by some miracle your vote made the
difference, there would be endless recounts and the real election would be
held in the courts. The mess after the 2000 election proved that, for
anyone who still thought his vote mattered.
One economist has calculated
that you have a better chance of dying on your way to the polls than of
deciding the outcome of an election. So your vote won’t make me
president.
Why, then, should you vote for
me? I don’t even want the job. In fact, that’s my chief
qualification.
Nobody could possibly be trusted
with the power of the presidency of the United States. Only a
megalomaniac would think he deserved such power. This means that we
are doomed to be ruled by madmen. So it would be a healthy gesture to
cast your ballot for someone who would accept that immense power (if he
had any chance of winning) only so that one of the major-party crackpots
didn’t get it.
![[Breaker quote: On me, if need be]](2004breakers/040420.gif) In
the purely
hypothetical case that I was elected, I would take the radical approach of
honoring my oath of office and respecting the limits imposed by the U.S.
Constitution. That would mean vetoing just about every bill that came
across my desk. Which would in turn mean that I would soon be impeached,
convicted, and removed from office.
Meanwhile, I’d try to do a
little good during my brief tenure. In order to make sure that no American
soldier should ever again die in vain, I would bring all our troops home
from every military base in the world. Presidents always say that our
fighting men (and women) haven’t died in vain, but that’s
always false. More than 600 have already died in vain in Iraq alone. More
will die in vain this week.
Bringing our troops home would
put an end to anti-American terrorism. Some will deny this, on grounds
that “the terrorists hate us for our freedom.” I want to put
that proposition to the test by ending American imperialism and
increasing American freedom. If terrorist attacks continue when we have
chosen freedom over empire, I will have been proved wrong.
I am a Catholic, and I would
govern as a Catholic. Most people who say they favor the separation of
church and state really want to get rid of the church. My own view is that
the best way to separate them is by, as far as possible, getting rid of the
state. This doesn’t mean I’d be taking orders from the
Vatican; I wouldn’t need specific orders. I know how to apply the
principles of my faith on my own. I would, of course, be open to advice
from the Pope; I might even ask for it. But I would do this openly, hiding
nothing from my fellow Americans.
So there is my tentative agenda:
restoring constitutional government, ending the American empire, and
governing as a Catholic. My enemies would call it “turning back the
clock,” “capitulating to terrorism,” and “taking
orders from the Pope.” All I can say is that we’ve been doing
it their way for a long time now, and they may take pride in the results if
they like. I agree with our first Catholic president: “I say we can do
better.”
And we used to do better. Much
better. That was before messianic government replaced modest
government, at home and abroad. Bush, who calls himself a conservative,
speaks obsessively of “changing the world” — spreading
democracy all over the place, fighting AIDS in Africa, and assuming other
fanciful “obligations.” He’s not even content with doing
good on this planet: He also wants to put a man on Mars. We’ve
reached the point where we hardly pay attention: Such ballyhoo goes in one
ear and out the other.
I told you they’re crazy.
Everything they do is, so to speak, in vain.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2004 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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