The next presidential election is more than a year away and by all appearances it is going to be a very, very long year.  We will hear a whole bevy of candidates telling us how they will solve all our problems and why every other candidate is a low-life scum bag that is not worthy of consideration.  There will be name calling, mud-slinging, false claims and smear campaigns.   It will not be pretty and odds are most people will be disgusted at some point along the way.

Yet, come November of 2016 we will vote and in January of 2017,  a new President will be inaugurated and the “Great American Experiment” will continue.  I am not the most politically minded person.  Over the course of my life I have been disappointed by Presidents and majorities of both parties.  But over the course of the next year I will do what I can to understand the candidates and I will cast my vote.

I am not very pleased with a lot that is going on in Washington these days; however, very recently I was in the nation’s capital to attend a conference.  It was a pretty brief trip with not a lot of extra time for sightseeing.  Yet, after lunch, I went for a walk that took me by the White House.  In front of me was the place that has been the home of every US President since John Adams occupied it in 1800.  This is as much a symbol of American and what we stand for as anything.  It should remind us of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This next year will be messy, but the end result will the continuation of a dream that remains the envy of much of the world.