Election Day is tomorrow! All throughout the country, people will be voting for a man they want to lead the United States for the next four years. Four years! That’s a huge commitment to make to anyone. Can you imagine starting off a relationship by making a four-year commitment? This is a huge decision. When you go on a date, you’re committing to one date. When you vote for the president, you’re committing to four years of them in your life. If I was supposed to be committing four years of my life to a new boy right off of the bat, I’d put a lot more consideration into that decision. If dating was handled in the same way as a presidential election, things would be a lot different.
First of all, if I was going to be promising to maintain a relationship with someone for four years, that person would have to do a great job of convincing me to do so. What do the presidential candidates do? They advertise! Therefore, any boy who wanted to run for the esteemed position of “My Boyfriend” would have to advertise as well. Each potential candidate would buy advertising time during all of my favorite television programs. Barack Obama and John McCain are spending billions of dollars to convince us to commit to them; why couldn’t a boyfriend do the same? The boyfriend candidates could run positive campaign ads for themselves or negative ads against each other. For example: “Last year, my opponent spent more than $400 in video games alone. My allowance went to charity. Choose me to be your next boyfriend, and change will come.”
Besides commercials, potential boyfriends would hold public speeches and rallies, during which they would explain in detail why they are the best candidate for my love. They would stage debates with one another, attacking each other’s flaws, building up their own plans for our future and giving the camera, and me, one big Biden smile or a little Palin wink. If they really wanted to make me choose one of them to be “My Boyfriend,” they would work on making buttons, posters and bumper stickers. This way, all of my family and friends could proudly display the candidate they think I should be with.
After a long campaign, I would finally make my choice of who would be spending the next four years as “My Boyfriend.” He would then be sworn in and our dating commitment would be solidified. My favorite part would be Inauguration Day, complete with parades and an Inauguration Ball to celebrate our new relationship. Of course, he could still be impeached from his spot if he did something terrible. For instance, Richard Nixon was almost impeached for hiding the Watergate tapes. I’m sure that finding out that my boyfriend lied about a hidden stash of pornography tapes in his closet would at least warrant some questioning and/or a trial.
There’s a lot more that would change if my relationships with boys were more like my relationship with the president. For example, I often find that it’s hard to make boyfriends open up about how they’re feeling about our relationship. That’s why, instead of a State of the Union Address, we would have routine State of Our Union Addresses. These conferences would be perfect opportunities for my boyfriend to let me know how things are going with us. Another aspect that could be incorporated into dating is approval ratings. Good birthday presents, thoughtful text messages and exciting dates are all things that could make his approval ratings skyrocket. Forgetting Valentine’s Day or getting jealous about a male friend, however, could make his approval ratings quickly drop.
All of these ideas seem kind of fun, but I’m guessing it couldn’t really work this way in real life. Thinking about choosing your boyfriend the same way you’d think about choosing your president most likely wouldn’t work out. Four years is a really long time to commit to someone right from the start, and it’s doubtful that any man would appreciate you giving him approval ratings. For now, I’m happy with just treating boyfriends as boyfriends and not as presidents. It’s probably for the best this way; I don’t know if I would like having the Secret Service around us all of the time, if you know what I’m saying.
Jordan’s column runs biweekly Mondays. She can be reached at j.hart@cavalierdaily.com.
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