Cutthroat Politics: A Competitive America is Tearing Itself Apart

A while ago, I had a revelation: Professional sports are a partial microcosm for the political world. The teams are political parties, or candidates for office. Once spectators (citizens) associate themselves with teams, generally they are reluctant, if not completely unwilling, to switch, no matter how skilled that team is. Some spectators choose not to associate with any teams, seeing sports in general as pointless and dumb. The broadcasting of games represents the media. The commentators are the analysts and Rush Limbaughs. Even steroids represent scandals. All the major components are there, except perhaps for the effects on the spectators.

Recently, I had another revelation. What's the main aspect that sports and politics have in common? Competition.

I'm sure most of you readers have been keeping up with the presidential race. (P.S. How fitting that it's called a "race.") The most recent controversy is the McCain ad linking Barack Obama to former terrorist William Ayers, and the subsequent shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" from fervent McCain supporters. This took the competition to a whole new level, and people saw just how ugly the campaign was getting. After that rally, we all finally woke up.

But we're still in the groggy-half-asleep-where-am-I-five-more-minutes phase. Yeah, things got ugly, and yeah, McCain's campaign is now close to doomed, but if we don't learn anything from this experience, it'll just happen all over again, and we'll be as numb to it as we have been to the rest of this election.

First, why did McCain run these ads? Well, he was desperate. He knew he was almost doomed, and the Ayers ad was his attempt to salvage his campaign. He wanted--and still wants--to win, and he would have done--and will still do--anything to win, even if it meant detracting everyone from the crucial issues at hand and playing dirty.

Quite frankly, it worries me that the presidency has become so little about issues and so much about winning. It makes me question whether or not the candidates, or the president, even care about the people. I even question the candidate I support. In a country where all the authority figures are shoving each other down the ladder in order to get to the top, I wonder who I can trust, especially as someone on a very low rung.

So, is there a flaw in the system that our founding fathers created? Could it be that they might not have known what they were doing, after all? Should we scrap the 200-year-old system and opt for a Greek democracy instead? Well, the short answer is, no. But we have to be extremely careful with the system we have. It was created so that we could choose the best leaders possible. We need to make sure it stays that way. Though they do have similarities, the political world isn't a sport. It's real life. It's your life, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. Treat it as such.