by Barbara A. Clark

Created on: December 30, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

Civic Responsibility

I recently was talking politics with a group of colleagues and friends. Having just returned from Iowa (my native state), I am always "pumped up" with politics on my mind since everywhere you turn now in Iowa the focus is on the upcoming Iowa Caucus on January 3.

In the United States, one often hears that there are three major topics of discussion that people should avoid: religion, sex and politics. It's a funny thing, because when I was growing up, I was encouraged to talk about two of those controversial topics: religion and politics. (Being a boomer with parents from a different generation, we didn't do too much discussion on sex!)

Of the two, I probably spent more time talking about politics than anything else. There are really many reasons why this was so, and the fact that I lived in Iowa had a lot to do with it, as well as the fact that my dad and his family were always very opinionated!

I am very grateful that I was exposed and encouraged to participate in our democracy. That meant that there was never a question whether I would vote when I was legally able to do so. But before voting, I needed to be informed on who I was voting for and why. It was my civic responsibility to learn what the issues were, to look inside myself to identify what issues were important to me and to vote for my candidate of choice.

This process was as necessary for me back then as it is still vital for all of us today. Yet how many of us are really informed of the candidates' positions? How many of us don't bother to vote at all, because we've become apathetic to the political process? Are you the kind of person who strategizes about how to vote based on what you think the country is "ready for?"

I was surprised in my conversation today with a colleague to hear him strategizing about whether the country was "ready for" a black President, a woman President or a Mormon President. He commented that he was not going to "throw away his vote any longer." I guess he felt that by really voting for his candidate of choice, (which is often who he perceives to be the least likely to win), he was "taking away" a vote for "the most likely to win" candidate in that same party, thereby resulting in the opponent from the other party winning the election.

Wow, I thought, this is a sad way to look at our democracy and our role in it. On what basis are we determining the one who is "most likely to win?" And at what point in the process? We all know that the polls change and that

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