What I Learned About Politics from my Third Grader

Many years ago, I excitedly cast my first vote in my Presidential election. . I was in the fourth grade and my school was conduting a straw poll. Now, 26 years later, my daughter is going to cast her first vote - also in a straw poll.
My daughter brought a paper home from school today showing all the candidates and a basic outline on their various positions. As I reviewed it with my daughter, I asked her who she was going to vote for. She told me that she was going to vote for Hillary Clinton, so naturally, my next question was why she chose her candidate? Her answer - "She's a girl and if she wins the election, she will be the first female president>" I explained to her that voting for a candidate simply because they look like you - same race, same gender, etc... - probably isn't the best criteria for choosing a candidate.
"Ok then," she says, " I'll guess I'll vote for John Edwards". This, of course, happened before Edwards had withdrawn from the race. Again, I ask her the reasons behind her choice. "He has a nice smile. He looks like a nice person adn I think that whoever is President should be a nice person." I explain to her that having a nice smile, good hair, and looking like a nice person aren't quite the best factors to be looking for in a candidate either. After all, Jimmy Carter had a megawatt smile and was a very nice person. What did four years of Carter get our country? Inflation through the roof, staglation, the highest unemployment in decades and 52 American hostages who spent over a year in Iranian custody. Thanks but no thanks.
So she asked me what factors she should consider when choosing a candidate. I told her that she should think a candidates views on the issues that were important to her, and then, based on that, decide which she thought would be best for the country. I showed her how to use the internet to look into the Candidates and their positions - where they were similar and more importantly, where they differed. After doing her own investigation, she came to remarkably similiar results to my own- torn between 3 different candidates.
As I talked to my daughter, I was amazed at how many adults never move beyond third grade. Some people really will vote for Hillary or Obama, simply because she is a woman, or he is an African American, he/she looks like me....
Some people really will cast their vote for the candidate with the nicest smile, or the candidate with the "likability" factor. Isn't it strange how little some of us change?

As for me, I was proud to cast my very first vote for Ronald Reagan. He is and will always be, my President. Right or wrong, he made me proud to be an American again, something that I think our whole country so desperately needed after Jimmy Carter. As for my daughter, I'm not sure who her first candidate will be, but after today, I hope she has a better understanding about what to consider and why voting is so important.