While Obama was running against McCain, my son asked me why Barack Obama would be a bad choice for president. He has recently been inundated with polls and votes at school and told me that he has even had discussions with other 11-year-olds about how they voted. He told me that Barack Obama would be the next president because all the kids in his class voted for him. I asked him who he voted for and he told me of course for McCain. Yet his question was an honest one since everyone around him is telling him that Barack Obama will be the best choice. I fumbled around wondering what to say. I googled it and found relatively nothing useful. I then came up with something he could understand and I could explain with simplicity.

“Son,” I said, here is why we don’t want Barack Obama to be the president.

Pretend you work really hard over one weekend mowing 10 lawns or shoveling snow off 10 or 20 sidewalks and you make about 50 bucks. On Monday when you go to school you go to get in line at the cafeteria and hand the cashier your money and it is a $10 bill.

Behind you is Robert the bully. Well Robert sees you have $10 and is a little bit envious that you had $10, but Robert spent his previous weekend playing video games, running around the neighborhood, watching TV and eating Cheetoh’s. So being envious he goes to the principal at school and tells the principal he only had $2 for lunch and Aiden had $10. Well the principal being liberal devises a plan in order to take some of your money and get it into the hands of Robert.

So she announces over the speaker that anyone having more than $5 must report to the office to pay a fine. The fine is $1 dollar if you have $5, $2 if you have $6, $3 if you have $7 and $4 if you have $8-$10. If you have more than $10 dollars you get fined $6. The students arrive at the office and are told of their fines and ask why they are being fined. They are told that they have to help pay for the lunches of those students who have less. The kids pay their fines and the principal announces to the school for those with $2 or less to come to the office to come and collect their lunch money.

The students who paid their fines watch those who paid nothing and worked for nothing collect their lunch money. The next day none of the kids show up with anything more than 2 dollars and that weekend the kids who paid fines decide it is their right to play video games, watch TV, run around the neighborhood and eat cheetoh’s.

That following Monday all the kids refuse to bring any money to school because those who were fined didn’t work for their money since their incentive to work was taken away because their money just went to pay for other people, and the ones who previously came to school with $1 or $2 dollars brought no money because they were thinking that the principal would fine the other students for lunch money and the less they have the more they would get from other students fines. Now that nobody has any money to pay for lunch everybody gets their lunch for free and the School has to take care of the bill. So thats how I explained to my son why voting for Barack Obama would be bad.