In the Center Ring: Issues

I listen to Sens. Obama and Clinton talk of health care and the economy, global warming and the war in Iraq, and I notice that they only drop in the personal anecdote or campaign anecdote rarely. They are full of talk of big ideas and big policy. I expect more from my leaders. And frankly, I expect more from the mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters who run the country now, in our Congress, on local school boards and paving the way for a new generation of women to leap into politics with both feet.

I want to believe that the politics I experience as a young woman in America is built on the backs of people who remember that a system for all to have health care versus a system that lowers cost for health care need to accomplish the same thing in the end: my siblings need to be able to take their children to the doctor when they're sick, whether their health care is universal or lower cost. I want to believe that my stepmother and aunt and cousins will be able to retire because they've faithfully paid into Social Security every year they have worked. I'm tired of hearing people degrade the Speaker of my House of Representatives – and as a citizen of the U.S., it is mine – because she's a woman.

In the coming years, whether our White House is Democrat or Republican, we need to come together to solve the problems of all Americans. I want to have health care and not just because I work for a company that offers it. I want to see green technology thrive because everyone sees that it's good and necessary. Most of all, I want to see people step back from the overabundance that flows from the internet, the network television, the capitalist-driven market place. I want to see stories on the news, not all as horrifying as 400+ children being removed from their home and families for certain, that reflect the actual people of the United States. I want to know what is going on in Iraq because those are friends of mine and friends of my friends over there. I'm tired of non-stop electioneering and policy. If I have to see politics in the news, I don't know about you, but I want it to be stories about the accomplishments of our politicians as we go forward into a twenty-first century that will have to see change, whether our leaders are black or white, male or female or Democrat or Republican.