The Undecideds

With just over a month until the 2008 Presidential Election, the news broadcasts still often focus on voters who have yet to make up their minds about who they’re going to vote for.

Seriously?

We’ve seen well over a year of daily, almost constant, media coverage of these candidates. Who doesn’t yet have enough information to make a decision? Is there really anyone out there who hasn’t made up their mind yet? And if so, should we really care about their opinions? Haven’t they been paying attention? If not, why not? Because they don’t really care, or their lives are too busy to pay attention to politics? Maybe they’re lying in order to attract attention to themselves?

I don’t know, but I can’t think of a reasonable excuse for not having made a decision.

This whole concept of being undecided this close to the election, after extremely long campaigns and extensive media coverage, doesn’t make any sense to me. I can imagine that someone might change their minds between now and the election, due, perhaps, to some significant upheaval or scandal within one of the campaigns. But I can’t understand how someone could claim to be undecided at this point in time.

I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise because maybe I’m missing something.

In related news, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is doing an interesting series on various aspects of both John McCain and Barack Obama. The two links below are to the transcripts of the stories on their styles of leadership. Each page has a link to watch the streaming video of the original broadcast as well:

• John McCain
• Barack Obama