To the editor:

In a few weeks I will fill bubbles. First bubble on the list will be for president and vice-president. Six candidates are running for president/vice president in Rhode Island (Kennedy/Shanahan are still on the ballot, though they have dropped out of the race). All but two of the tickets have zero chance of winning. In reality I, like the rest of the voting country, will – if I want my vote to “count” – fill the bubble for either Harris/Walz or Trump/Vance.

However, in filling that bubble I, personally, will not be voting primarily for the candidates. Instead, I will be voting for the party they represent. Because contained within the Republican and Democratic parties are very different ideas, ideals, and general blueprints for how they would create, in the words of Lincoln, “a more perfect union.”

Lincoln knew, as we should, that the union of which he spoke – the United States of America (then just 33 states and about 30 million people) – would never be perfect. It couldn’t be, when its citizens held such contrasting views of what a perfect America would look like.

Today, that realization is even more true. With 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the Territories, and 337 million people, what looks like a more perfect union for any one of us will equally look like a less perfect union for millions of others.

Campaigns try to get us to focus on, to get worked up over “kitchen table” issues: the cost of bacon, the price of a gallon of gas, the concerns of living day to day.

I don’t want to sound insensitive, but if those are real issues for some people they are not issues for me. I am not rich, but I am never bacon-poor. I am wealthy enough to live modestly.

I am aware of, and agree, that there are issues beyond the kitchen table – drugs, violence, climate change, illegal immigration, and lots more – that need solutions. There always were such issues, and there always will be. No one candidate can or will solve them; no one election can or will solve them.

If I vote on the basis of the candidates’ professional transcripts (“experience”) and public personas (“beerability”) (or worse: hair, or skin, or gender), I might as well be voting for Prom Queen or Prom King. Instead, I see voting as less an act of electing a candidate and more an affirmation of what I believe would be a more perfect union, and which party best represents my beliefs about what “more perfect” means. I strive through my vote for a more perfect America. Never to be perfect, but always capable of being more perfect. For me, it’s another step on the road to that never-neverland that America, and Americans, have always prided themselves for traveling toward.

If I vote for a party I put aside the pluses and minuses of the candidates, their human strengths and weaknesses, and vote instead for their party’s broad aspirations, what their party hopes to achieve, not just in short term fixes to the aches of a still-growing America, but to what the party believes can be achieved in the long term – what our country could be for the next generation and the ones after that.

This election’s campaigns are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the hope of having people like me, like you, fill their candidate’s bubble. And many of those millions of dollars are spent heralding one guy while denouncing, often viciously and deceitfully, the other. It’s easy to get caught up, or fed up, with all the backbiting.

All the four candidates have flaws. All four may even have virtues. Their flaws or virtues shouldn’t matter. What should matter is that they have been selected by their party to run for the highest offices in the country, and that having been selected by their party they stand for what the party stands for. They are the tip of their party’s ideological iceberg. Therefore, as voters we should pay less attention to the lipservice of the campaigning candidates and instead find out what their party stands for, what is each party’s positions and priorities – it aspirations for a more perfect union –, and then vote for the party that bests represents our own positions and priorities, our own aspirations, our own vision for the America we want to live in, for what we want America to be for ourselves and for future generations.

My suggestion: ignore the candidates. Instead, find out what their parties care about, and what the party’s candidate is in essence running on. Each party’s concerns can be found in its platform. The platforms are too long to read for most people – me included –, but early on in each document the party highlights its priorities and goals. It is worth taking a quick glance at each and see which more aligns with you and your view of a more perfect union. And then, vote for that party, not just for president/vice president, but for every candidate running for office at whatever level of government, who also, in their individual capacity, should share at least to some degree those views and aspirations – your views and aspirations – for the best America.

Jerry Blitefield

Warren