It's Not My Party

Forgive my rant, but I have to say I don't understand what motivates voters who describe themselves as independents, including some people whom I dearly love. As a journalist, I avoid campaign contributions, marches, petitions, bumper stickers, and waving (and especially wearing) the flag--anything that could compromise my ability to report a story fairly. But what of the millions of adults who say they vote for the person, not the party, as though theirs is somehow the nobler approach? When did the cult of personality get to be the moral high ground? To me, choosing a candidate based on how much you like him or her is not that different than obsessing about Brad and Angelina or Tom and Katie. We can gush over their family photos in Vanity Fair, People, and US, but what we actually know about them is only PhotoShop deep. It's the same, really, with John and Barack, Sarah and Joe. Must the fate of the country come down to a preference for Michelle's pared-down shifts over Cindy's ruffles or vice versa? 

If we focus on what the candidates do instead of just what they say, then the party they've chosen is a pretty big hint as to how they think about the future makeup of the Supreme Court or how proactive the Environmental Protection Agency should be. The lines between Republicans and Democrats, so blurred in the 1990s, have become neon bright in the past few years. And for all the talk about being a maverick or an agent of change, the presidential candidates are only going to drive so far outside their proscribed lane. This is not NASCAR people, this is politics.