Obama Stands as Best Option

For those of us who haven't spent the past few years living in a bomb shelter, it's common knowledge that the grassroots efforts and overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of college-age students helped get President Barack Obama elected to the presidency in 2008. After all, two thirds of people aged 18 to 29 (that's a record, folks) voted for the man. Has much changed since 2008? Not really, according to the Pew Research Group's most recent study.

According to the study, the Millenial generation (people born 1981-1993) still favors Obama by a margin of 26 percent for the upcoming 2012 election. That shouldn't be surprising, despite the disappointment Obama has proved to be for so many of us. The study also showed that Millenials have more trust in the government than any other age group, are most likely to identify themselves as liberal, and are least likely to say that the "government has too much control of daily life."

Of course, this isn't to say that we young folk are enamored with Obama in the same way we were a few years ago. His approval rating was an alarmingly low 38 percent last month, and is still hovering around a meager 43 percent, the worst for an incumbent president during the November before the next election, ever. People expected foreign policy to shy away from the neoconservative approach of good ol' George B. and Dicky C., and thought the unemployment rate would return from its trip to the stratosphere. Neither of those happened, obviously – the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan skyrocketed for a time, and many of us seniors will likely be without jobs next year. Imagine the prospects for those without degrees. How can Obama expect us to once again give him our vote of confidence a year from now?

Simple: It's better than voting for anyone the GOP has on offer at the moment. The list of names makes one shudder from horror: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman. Romney, the man for whom the site www.mittromneyflipflops.com was invented? Cain, who has a new sexual assault accusation leveled against him every week? Bachmann, the woman who said Iraqis should be grateful to the United States for what we did for them, and that they should repay us with their oil revenues as compensation? Perry, that governor from Texas who … well, actually I can't remember anything he's done. Oops.

Can you imagine if any of these people were to represent the people of the U.S. as their president? That any of them hold any kind of office is bad enough, but thinking about such people in the White House is downright terrifying. When it comes to choosing who faces Obama next year, Republicans probably won't be selecting the candidate who represents the GOP best, but rather the one who causes them to lose their faith in humanity the least.

Such is American politics, however. Most people, especially people our age, don't have the time or the energy to research every candidate's positions on all the issues, so they just do the next best thing instead: They look at pictures of candidates and how well they speak in front of a camera. If that's really the case, can there be any doubt as to who will have our support come next November?