Try applying same standard

In his letter “Rubio like Obama but he’s the real deal,” the writer derided those who, from his perspective, chose the president out of ignorance. However, when a person takes it upon himself to dictate just which qualities, abilities and experiences should or should not influence our votes, he should apply the same standard to everyone. The writer fails miserably in that regard.

Consider the following observation: when John McCain named Sarah Palin to be his running mate, it was for the specific purpose of energizing his campaign. She appealed to many people because of, among other things, her personality, appearance, enthusiasm and speaking abilities. These reasons are high on the list of those to which the writer refers in the following sentence: “Most people are ignorant about politics, don’t care and vote for the aforementioned reasons.” One would need to be delusional to think that Palin’s appeal resulted from anything other than a combination of those “aforementioned reasons.” Thus, by adding her to the ticket, McCain encouraged people to vote for the very reasons that, according to our enlightened, self-appointed authority, lacked merit. An educated guess though, is that the fair and balanced gentleman from Stanwood, embraced the choice without objection. After all, if we try hard enough, we can usually devise ways to reconcile such conflicts of belief. But perhaps I’m wrong about everything.

Dan Postema

Everett