Election

"In what ways were you inspired during the last presidential campaign? Do you recall any specific moments where you felt a shift in your attitude towards politics, life, the world? How did those feelings translate into actions? Or, did you find the whole campaign season so overwhelming that you just tuned out? If so, what do you think could be changed to improve the election process?"

I remember, above all, a shift in the topics on everyone's mind. Politics saturated everything, every minute of every day. A full year before the primaries, I was being overrun with slander for candidates I was, in all honesty, quite surprised were running at all. Barack Obama? That dude from Illinois I read about a few years ago? Cool, hope he does better than Keyes did in 2000. Fred Thompson? Are the Republicans that desperate for a new Regan that they'll elect the West Wing dude? Hillary Clinton? Is... is that technically allowed?

In all seriousness, it brought me back into politics, something I had honestly given up since the 2004 election. Who can blame me, I grew up in Seattle! Everyone there was on the left, and any further debate didn't seem to get anywhere. To see everyone in Seattle united against Bush and still fail did an amazing job on my young, impressionable mind. There had to be some form of corruption, I assumed. There was no way that the everyman supported this person.

But watching Obama go from an underground-ish movement, to see the internet (which had become my home in 2008) line up to help him, to see him topple even the powerful Clinton dynasty... It gave me hope, for lack of a less tacky way of using the word.

(Of course, I also learned that not every underground movement works... Ron Paul comes to mind, but frankly, it was for the best that he lost)