November 1, 2004 A Good Time to Pause

This month's journal entry is a bit different. Rather than having you spend a minute or two reading our observations, we are hoping you will use that time to do some reflecting about the following.

As you know, this has been a Presidential election year, and by the time you read this, the decision about who will lead the country for the next four years will likely be in. (This assumes that a similar ordeal like Florida in 2000 does not occur again!)

Regardless of whether your choice was victorious, please take some time to reflect on the process that took place this year. Some things for you to ponder include:

Were you more or less engaged this election vs. others? For what reasons?

 

Are you becoming more satisfied or more frustrated with the way the election process is conducted and campaigns are run?

 

Do you believe the information you were able to obtain about the candidates through various media sources was credible and helpful? Is the information about the candidates and their positions becoming more useable or more misleading?

 

How would you rate this year's overall election process relative to others?

 

What would you say you have learned from this campaign?

I hope you agree that electing a President is pretty serious business. It does require some real effort by people like you and me to become clear on the issues that are most important to each of us, and to determine which candidate (in our own minds) will best deal with those issues. I hope you will continue to put forth the effort, in spite of how crazy the campaign process seems to be sometimes. It is not a perfect system, but the privilege to vote and have one's voice heard is something of immense value.