Yesterday I received a campaign flyer from Duncan D. Hunter for Congress and started looking at it, not to think that I’d vote for him, but to see why on this earth anyone would elect him. Our local newspaper had an article about our congressional district and how Hunter had a good chance of winning it. What makes him qualified for this position? His father is the current representative for our district and he served in the Marines (he is still in the reserves). Did I list anything else? Nope.

In the campaign flyer, he opposed the bailout on Wall Street. While I’m not a huge fan of it, economists understand that something must be done in order to keep the economy from going into more of a recession (without credit, people can’t buy houses, cars, and businesses can’t expand). He, of course, didn’t offer any other suggestion (at least in the flyer) for how to improve the economy (other than to keep military bases open in San Diego).

I don’t see the other candidates for this race being any better than him, but he has no credentials to become a U.S. Representative. He surely isn’t going to represent my interests if he gets elected.

With the recent events about the economy and how John McCain hurried back to Washington to help out in the deal, I started think about politicians doing the job they were elected to do. The presidential candidates and vice-presidential candidates are campaigning when they are supposed to be in Washington doing their jobs. We, the taxpayers, are paying for their new “job search” and paying them for not doing their current job. McCain and Obama should have resigned their positions in order to campaign for president as they are both doing a disservice to their states. Campaigning appears to be a full time job; how can the presidential candidates listen to the discussions in senate and participate if they aren’t there? Yes, McCain and Obama came back to throw in their two cents on the bailout, but where have they been for all the other discussions? I can watch the discussions on C-SPAN, but does that mean I’m participating? No.

Speaking of politicians doing their jobs, if you look at the official house calendar, congressmen (and congresswomen) only work 9 months out of the year. I suspect they are supposed to be talking to their constituents the rest of the time, but does that really happen? Why do we pay these people so much to do so little? Oh, it’s because they make the laws.