If you can't hear yourself talk over the sound of Blue Oyster Cult's "I'm Burning For You" blasting out of my ear buds, then chances are I can't hear you either. And to answer your question: Have I registered to vote? Nope. Will I register to vote? Yes. Will I wait to do it until that cute girl with the clipboard that I saw here last week is back? Absolutely.
Last Sunday at Divine Redeemer there was no homily. Instead a deacon read from a document recently issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship." After church I picked up a copy and the next day I gave it a thorough reading and determined that, to some degree, I would use it as a guide by which to measure McCain and Obama in the upcoming election, and to find out where I stood politically in relation to The Church and to the candidates.
This resolution has turned out to be a lot more difficult to follow through with than I imagined.
After figuring out that Obama had a campaign headquarters less than a mile from my house I decided that I couldn't really have any better shot at learning about his policies than going right to the source. And I did. The first time I stopped by Obama-central I did so at 11 o'clock at night with a carload of passengers who had no idea why I was making this random pit-stop. I decided just to make a quick stop to pick up campaign literature. When I entered the door I was greeted by half a dozen of the most friendly, young, clean-cut Democrats I've met in this town. It really would have been great to sit down and talk to them, but I was just there to get some background reading. Turns out all they had was a biographical pamphlet that read like an obituary and a copy of Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech.
I was disappointed with the lack of reading material, but I went over the speech as carefully as I could and prepared myself for what I thought would be the first interview session in a series, addressing key issues like abortion, gun rights, universal health care and Obama's immigration policy. After reading an article in Newsweek about Barack's upbringing and incredibly diverse faith-background, a review of the speech already mentioned and the speech itself, I was geared up to hear more and to try to raise some challenging questions to some of his most avid supporters.
What I got was a waste of 45 minutes of my time and what Obama got was strike one.
At 8pm the main office of Barack's barracks was manned by two paid employees. One was a woman in her early 40's with the voice of a secretary and the political drive of a butterfly. After welcoming us and asking if we wanted the volunteer all we heard out of her for the rest of our visit was this: "Well now, that was just the nicest man there on the phone. He was a McCain supporter, but he was just so nice. Told me upfront that he was on the other side of the fence and said that I sounded so nice he wished he could change. What a nice man."
The other employee was a younger girl, probably fresh out of college, who, at an average of 4 words per minute, and while welcoming interruptions whenever she could, managed to tell me NOTHING about Obama except that he had a really sweet website. And to her credit, he does. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Hi there, I'm Zach, I was just wondering if you might be willing to talk with me for a bit about where Obama stands on some key issues (my intent was to talk about some life-based issues like abortion, stem-cell research, the death penalty and euthanasia).
Probama: Umm.... are you from a Newspaper? Uh... or T.V. or something.....
Me: Nope, just want to be informed.
Probama: ....Uh...Cuz you have to tell us if you are from...the uh...media...
Me: Nope.
Probama: (Turns to a person leaving the phone bank room) Uhh...did you...put in all your...uh...data? 'kay... Uh...huh... Haaaaaaaa.... (that's her laugh). (Turns back to me) So...have you checked out the uh...website?
That's pretty much how it went. She told me nothing. She refused to give me any information (she called someone to get ahold of voting records once, but they didn't pick up). In the end all she ended up doing was e-mailing me Obama's "Blueprint for Change," which, despite the fact that it is the most important document of campaign literature Barack has put together, she neither had in hard copy, nor had she even downloaded it before I asked for it. She couldn't even find it on that darn website that she talked up so much. This, might I remind you, is a paid campaign coordinator.
I'll probably head back there this weekend sometime when I'm pretty confident she isn't around, but having my first visit in earnest to Obama headquarters go so poorly put a serious damper on my enthusiasm for this project.
P.S. Tomorrow is movie-review Saturday. If you've got a pick go ahead and leave me the title of the flick and a spoiler-free blurb about it in a comment and you'll probably see it reviewed in the near future.
