The Pointlessness of Political Lawn Signs

I am very much done with this political season—have been for months now. I’m done with the divisive political Facebook posts from friends on both sides of the aisle who clearly need to toss back a glass of wine and lighten up already. I’m done with the endless barrage of political ads on television that tell you nothing about the candidate they want you to vote for, but make the candidate they don’t want you to vote for appear like a less well-adjusted version of Charles Manson. I’m done with the countless Saturday morning robo-calls from my own political party that make me want to vote for candidates from the other party out of spite. But most of all, I’m done with the political lawn signs.

I know of all the things I mentioned, lawn signs probably seem the most innocuous, but for some reason they bother me the most. At least the other forms of political expression I mentioned above attempt to convey some sort of information. Yes, the information is usually biased, skewed, faulty, and otherwise not very helpful, but at least some sort of message is coming across. What information does a lawn sign provide? A name. That’s pretty much it. Just a name.

I don’t mean to offend people with lawn signs, but really, what’s the point?

Now that you’ve shown me the candidate’s name what would you like me to do with that microscopic bit of information? If it’s the candidate that I like do you want me to pull over, ring your bell, and shake your hand? Congratulations, you’re just like 60,000,000 other people who are going to vote for the same dude.

What if your sign has the name of the candidate I don’t like? Are you hoping that seeing the name of the guy I’m not going to vote for as I drive past your house is going to throw me into such a blind rage that I may crash my car into a tree, slip into unconsciousness, and not be able to function until November 7^th when it’s too late to vote?

Ah, I know. You think that I may be an undecided voter. You think that despite the fact that I’ve seen your candidate’s name approximately 3.8 billion times over the past year, this one instance of seeing his name will throw me over the edge and cause me to say, “Okay, this settles it. This person who I’ve never met before and I know absolutely nothing about is going to vote for Candidate X, and since they have such lovely gardenias in front of their house, I guess I’ll vote for him too.”

Not going to happen. I looked it up and found out that in the history of democratic elections not one person has ever attributed their voting choice to seeing someone’s lawn sign. But hey, don’t let that stop you from proudly displaying yours. I mean there’s a first time for everything, right? Maybe if you take extra good care of your sign, and you wax and polish it every night before you go to bed, someone driving by will be so impressed with your lawn sign that it will influence their vote. And maybe that one vote will cause there to be a majority of votes in your state for your candidate! And Maybe Your State Will Be The State That Tilts The Electoral Map To Your Candidate!! AND MAYBE YOU AND YOUR LAWN SIGN WILL BE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SENDING YOUR CANDIDATE TO THE WHITE HOUSE!!!

But probably not.

Potential Vice President Sets Off Personal Crisis

As soon as Paul Ryan was announced as Mitt Romney’s running mate I did what 100,000,000 other Americans probably did—I rushed straight to his Wikipedia page. While the entry was of decent size, and I’m sure filled with many relevant tidbits about his life and career, I found that I could not read past the very first factoid right after his name. Paul Davis Ryan’s birthdate is January 29, 1970. This man was born the year AFTER me.

I know it’s ridiculous, but somehow I just can’t wrap my mind around the possibility of having a Vice President younger than myself. I mean, what if Romney wins the general election? And what if, a week after being sworn in he chokes on a pretzel while watching a football game like the last Republican president, and isn’t as lucky as his predecessor and ends up buying the farm? Then the baton would be passed to Paul Ryan and suddenly, instead of a Vice President younger than me, we would have a President younger than me. This just cannot be.

Why am I so hung up on this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Paul Ryan was born the year after the first moon landing, and Woodstock, and the Miracle Mets. Or maybe it’s because he was born in the same decade that brought us disco and Space Invaders. Or maybe it’s because he’s younger than people like Adam Sandler, Pauly Shore, and J.Lo for crying out loud!

But who am I kidding? Really this is about the horrifying realization that I’m getting old and that there really can be people in positions of responsibility who are younger than myself. I remember having a similar internal freak-out the first time I went to a doctor younger than me. I was in my early 30s at the time and my new doctor assigned to me by my HMO was a young woman in her mid-to-late 20s. She was probably a year or two removed from medical school and all I was able to think throughout the entire physical exam was “are you really qualified to stick that thing where you’re sticking it?”

This boils down to ageism, I realize—the absurd notion that if I’m not qualified or experienced enough to do something, nobody younger than me can possibly be qualified or experienced enough to do it either. I know it’s not rational, but I can’t shake it. And I suspect that as the years go by it will only get worse. When I’m 60 and have a 55-year-old lawyer I’ll wonder how he possibly could have passed his bar exam already.

I know I need to get over all this, and perhaps extensive psychotherapy is in order. For now, though, there is really only one question at hand: Do we really want a Vice President born the year after the debut of Sesame Street?