Politics of today kind of remind me of my days at middle school. To become the ruler, the utter top of line for all questions, laws, and vetoes, one must prove one’s worth over the worth of one’s opponent. Today in my school, that means rumors, giggles, snide remarks, mean jokes, and complete and utter lies. It also means name-dropping, persistence, and stretching the truth. When I watch the debates, I see these same kinds of things. There is no need to make yourself look better, be better, when you can just make yourself look better than your opponent. It seems to me that the easier of these two routes has been taken in the case of 12 through 14 year olds everywhere, and also in the case of our two candidates for this election.

When does making yourself look better to beat your opponent begin to backfire?

To fight fire with fire is one thing, but to light the first match is another. Obviously defending ourselves is necessary; but when does offense become the best defense? When is it that we cannot make our message any more positive, so we have to make the opponent’s negative? No one can name a date for this. What I will ask, then, is why we let it get to this point.
Why are politics based on who can make the bigger, more believable slur campaign and not based on the issues? Trivial things, like a name, or an event that occurred 40 years ago, are brought up from the dust to belittle an opponent. At what point will it stop?

When will America say enough is enough?

We don’t need a president who is catty and nosy; we only need middle school once. We don’t need a vice president whose prime campaign strategy is a joke concerning lipstick; we have fashion consultants. We don’t need a president who’s funny and relatable; we have friends. What we need is a calm, professional, intelligent president who can deal with the issues in such a way that benefits the most people the most.

The fact that politics has slipped into an abundance of slurs, lies, and pointless arguments is sad for our country. We argue about who did what and how much it helped, but for what? In this argument, we waste the time that we could be spending on benefiting the issues that we so fervently discuss. Why do we waste our intelligence, money, eloquence, on belittling others to put ourselves on top? This is another trait common in middle school. This is most likely because of the level of self esteem that most middle-schoolers have.

I don’t want a president with low self esteem. I don’t want a president who slurs another to try and come out on top. I don’t want a president with no experience and a newborn baby.

Don’t we all want a president who can handle the most stressful job in the world?