By the time this journal is in print, the election season will have reached a fever pitch, and Americans will be facing the decision of whom to vote for. Unless something completely unexpected happens, the choices for the two major parties will be John McCain and Barack Obama. Both candidates will say their share of silly things, make promises they will not be able to keep, and do a fair amount of pandering to various groups. Perhaps McCain will learn to read a teleprompter, and Obama will learn to bowl. But despite the high drama and the sheer ridiculousness brought on by elections, voters will have to choose between two very different candidates who are separated not only by race but also by age, temperament, and philosophy. Despite what the cynics might say, it really does matter who is elected president, and it seems to me that this year it matters more than ever. From global warming to food shortages to the price of oil to the war in Iraq, the world faces issues so serious that we simply cannot waste any more time by pretending the problems don’t exist. On a national level, we have a decision to make about the role of government and how many services it should provide. While this decision might not have worldwide consequences, for the country it is a serious matter about which there is great disagreement. Health care, social security, unemployment benefits, taxes, and a great many other items are all affected by the decision we make about the role of government in everyday life. Do we want more government services, and, if so, then how are we going to pay for them? Or, do we want fewer government services and, as a consequence, let people pretty much fend for themselves?

Allow me, if you will, a slight digression. In May my mother died, and for her eulogy I wrote a piece entitled “My Mother and the Notion of Community.” It has been printed in this journal, so I won’t belabor the points I made. However, I would like to expand a bit about how the poverty and hardships my mother endured during her childhood during the Great Depression helped form her convictions as an adult. That is, the absolute necessity and importance of community. I deliberately did not bring politics into the eulogy and instead focused on family and the personal. My intent, after all, was to honor my mother, not to promote political discussion. So what I didn’t mention was that my mother was a lifelong Democrat who firmly believed in social services, that her notion of community expanded well beyond family and friends to include the whole country. Growing up poor and with a single mother, she knew firsthand what it was like to live in a society that did not have many social services. It was not romantic; it was not cozy. In the winter, the small apartment—uninsulated and over a shed—that she shared with her mother and grandmother was so cold that they had to wear boots. They had a sink and toilet but no bathtub, and once a week they trooped downstairs to take a bath in a relative’s bathtub. My grandmother and great-grandmother slept in the one bedroom; my mother slept in the hallway.

In the 2008 caucus, after much deliberation, my mother voted for Hillary Clinton. Like many women her age, my mother felt that Hillary Clinton was on the side of women and children, that if Clinton were elected, she would make sure those women and children would get the services they needed, if they were poor, to make their lives more comfortable and healthy, to make their lives more equal. “Why should rich people get so many tax breaks?” she would sometimes ask, and trickle-down economics would just make her roll her eyes. From personal experience, she knew very well how that worked, how there wasn’t much of a trickle for poor people who worked hard but still struggled.

As it turns out, my mother was justifiably concerned about the “have-nots.” Right now, the gap between the rich and the poor is the largest it’s been since the 1920s. Millions of people are uninsured; retirement pensions have gone the way of the passenger pigeon; and four years at our local state university cost more than what we paid for our house in the mid-1980s. And why should we be surprised? For nearly thirty years, we have had a group of powerful politicians—from the far right—who have made it their business to chip away at the New Deal programs that did so much to promote equality and to relieve the terrible poverty in this country. Fortunately, those politicians haven’t totally succeeded. Our quality of life isn’t on the same level as, say, Rwanda or Sierra Leone. But according to the United Nations Human Development report, we’re not at the top of the list, either. We’re well below Iceland and Norway (the top two), and we’re below Finland and Ireland as well.

As my mother might have said, “For God’s sake, we’re the richest country in the world. We can do better than this.”

Now that Hillary Clinton is no longer running for president, whom would my mother have voted for, if she had lived long enough? There is no doubt in my mind. Barack Obama, of course. To paraphrase my mother, “Barack Obama might not be as good as Hillary Clinton, but he sure beats John McCain, who, with his tax cuts, thinks only of the rich.”

In this, as well as many other things, Mom was right.