Walking down the hallway at FHN, one may hear the usual remarks from students discussing politics.

“Why can’t the politicians get anything done?”

“Our vote doesn’t matter.”

And personal favorite: “(Insert current president’s name here) is the most tyrannical president we’ve had in years!”

It’s important that students are talking about politics and being active, but it’s important they don’t keep these questions rattling around their collective noggins for long. When students find the answers to these questions, then they can stop the endless cycle between each generation of asking the same redundant questions about American politics.

“Why can’t politicians get anything done?”

This is a common complaint to hear from moping citizens, especially nowadays with gridlock being the apparent state our government is always in. But people fail to realize our government needs to be slow and it was built to be slow also. The American government has a series of checks and balances built within it, not just the ones between branches of government like the Judicial and Executive branch, but within the legislative branch itself specifically.

On the somewhat rare occasion Congress passes anything, it’s almost always because one party is in control of both the Senate and the House. At any time congress passes legislation, that’s when people complain even more so than when a gridlock occurs.

The legislative process can be stopped very easily by a minority party because the government was set up to ensure the minority had their say and had a chance. The minority party needed to always be represented and given a chance. Emphasis on representation? Not unheard of in American History.

“(Insert current president’s name of here) is the most tyrannical president we’ve had in years!”

There has not been a single president in U.S. history that hasn’t increased federal power in one way or another.

Hate to break the news but as anti-government any president claims he is, he probably gave himself more power also. It’s not that a president can’t try and be anti-government, but in order for a politician to push their agenda, they need power to do it.

Now if one want to argue against pro-government presidents and call them tyrants, that’s fine. But it is very difficult for any president to be a dictator because of how involved our populace is in politics.

The president can’t swear without someone throwing a fit, let alone make himself a tyrant.

“Our vote doesn’t matter.”

This will usually occur when someone’s preferred candidate loses the Electoral College vote in an election but not the popular vote. Both parties have complained about this being unfair especially when it favors their side.

However as of recently, some states are trying to remove their winner-take-all electoral vote system to give its electoral votes based on sections in the state each giving out it’s own electoral vote. The only problem with this idea is that whoever draws the districts, it will be automatically unfair and corrupt and always favor one side. Look at gerrymandering in states for representative seats for example. This is already a broken system with the drawing of the districts being bought in order to favor one party over another.

The Winner-Take-All system may not be best, but what some others are offering is much worse. If the thought one’s vote didn’t matter before, this new system being pushed would make the citizen chopped liver.

But on a national level more than ever is one vote important. After all the hullabaloo in the 2000 election, Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore had lost the election by 527 votes, those 527 votes prevented him from winning the state of Florida and giving him the 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Gore lost by .005 %. That wasn’t the first time a presidential race has been down to a hair either, like the election of 1876 where the candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, lost by a single electoral college vote.

Never think a single vote doesn’t matter, it only loses value when one thinks it does.

With the answers now given to them, students and future voters can bear these thoughts in mind when confabulating American politics with another.

(“From Left Field” is written in order to provide a students viewpoint on certain issues that are discussed by the student populace at FHN.
Please remember this is purely an opinionated editorial. If anyone wishes to give feedback or ask questions, just comment below.)