Returing to Israel and Egypt

After a decade I'm back traveling in this strange part of the world I once called home. I feel almost as much a stranger as when I first arrived just out of high school. Both the places I'm revisiting and myself have changed. Like everywhere else, there is more money; more people buying and selling land, cars, camels, carpets than ever before. Israel looks like a modern, bustling place with fancy cars and stretches of real estate indistinguishable from a suburban subdivision back home. The once dusty, remote beach town I'm seeing again here in the Sinai now has a paved promenade and wireless internet emanating out of scores of dive shops. Though I never thought it possible at age 18, I'm older. I eat things other than pizza and burgers. I even have a lovely wife to see all this change with me. It's been tough to come up with one theme to try and wrap up such a hodgepodge of feelings and experiences so I'm left with the old standby of change, the one true constant. It's a trip getting older.

Requirements to Run For President

According to the constitution, as I understand it, there are only two requirements for who can be president: you must be 35 and you must be Born in the USA. As a matter of human nature, we tend to front-load our decisionmaking on who should be president with precidents, or knee-jerk instinct.

There is an almost conscious aversion to looking at the substance of a candidate; the people he/she associates with, how the causes they spend energy jibe with our own beliefs, or whether they'll be able to handle the horsetrading and compromise that the office demands.

Questions are asked like:

• Is he enough like Reagan?
• Is she too much like Clinton?
• Does he have a pre-911 mindset?
• How much did that haircut cost?
• Is he black or white?
• Does his divorce history matter?

Do any of these questions matter? More specific, do any of these questions get to the meat of any matters? No. I know it's early in the running, but shouldn't there be some arguments of substance taking place?

I know that human nature gravitates first to questions that confirm our instincts over of the more cerebral issues like how we feel about the environment, guns, abortion or poverty. I know that a lot of my decisions are based on how I feel about a person, and not what they say, but the decisions a president might actually make are severely understated by the moderators of our discussions.

As the so-called "4th Estate" of power, AKA the media, are responsible for guiding discussion on important matters of the day. We watch the news to find out what's going on beyond our immediate perceptions, or the rumors that pass between people. The news should save us from instinct instead of feeding on it. It should tell us truth, not inuendo.

If the news does not provide us with a relevant, accurate assessment of what our presidential candidates actually belive, then they are doing us a disservice by diverting our attention to those important matters in place of what sounds good.

Business demands that everything be driven by what is immediately appealing to an audience, as when Colgate sells the smile in place of a tube of toothpaste. But, much as the Rasputins and Tallyrands in the shadow world of politics would like, a smile is not good enough when electing a president.

The basic model of business, which appeals to desire, could be ruinous to our democracy if applied without moderation.

Competition can just as easily be a race to the bottom as a race to the top.

Cable news networks and news organizations of all stripes must remind themselves of their responsibilities. They should be journalists first, businessmen second. They must demand that a candidate tell us what they actually think, not just how they look or how they feel. I don't know how this is done beyond some smart reporters and some morally and politically conscious editors.

Media power, while not written into law, must be used wisely.