IF SIX YEAR OLDS COULD VOTE

If six year olds could vote, we'd finally be on the right path.

Last night's AP Poll says we're in a dead heat (44/43) going into the Presidential election. But that's a poll of Americans who are 18 years or older.

I'd like the AP to poll six year olds. In that demographic, there would be no dead heat--there would be a landslide in the making--for Barak Obama.

We live in such scary, dicey times, right? Not six year olds. They live in the real world, which means playing rain or shine, not suffering the coat that is too itchy, fearlessly jumping off of high places, running more than walking, singing when the mood strikes. They are color-blind, gender-blind, money-blind, hatred-blind. They fight fair and love deeply. They want to touch everything, read everything, know everything, be everything. They are alive. And, oh yeah: they love boogers.

And they LOVE Barack Obama.

Why? I think it has something to do with their ability to read an aura, even with sound bites and pundits and fine print and lousy rhetoric clamoring to cloud the atmosphere. Six year olds are inexorably drawn to honesty, integrity, and authenticity and are repelled by anything that has even the slightest whiff of "con" to it.

As E says whenever he sees the candidates "Yah! Obama! Boo! McCain!" (It is worth noting that he was saying this even while I was working on behalf of Hillary Clinton, so it is an innate integrity thing for sure, not just the parroting of parental partisanship.)

Six year olds are sober, sane, and grounded in reality. They are, quite vividly, here in the world now--present in a way that most of us struggle to be everyday.

If only they could vote.