For the past year or so, I’ve listened and watched the candidates of both parties campaign for the presidency.

It’s been so exciting as they play on the poll numbers as to what Americans want to be told in order to win our vote. I’ve often wondered what these people are really about.

For the first time I feel that I’m confronted with a group of candidates where it makes no difference who wins. Their objectives are the same — to win the White House at all costs.

They all seem to have the same rhetoric. They tell us what they think we want to hear on any issue. I can’t speak for everyone, but for me I would like to have one candidate step out of the pack and tell me what they really think on an issue and give me a plan to rectify it.

When I listen to all this I actually believe I know them. I know that not one candidate is interested in the hardships that me and my family are confronted with on a daily basis.

They don’t care about what we have to pay for — food, fuel, heating our homes, or what kind of health care we have. Their only concern is winning the White House.

It really gets to me that they think so little of the voters in this country. I’d rather they tell me outright that they think I’m not good enough to dirty their shoes on, that I’m just a statistic with no meaning to them but a vote.

I’m not ever going to Washington to have coffee in the Oval Office and be asked what matters to me. I’m ordinary. I work in a steel mill, I attend a regular church, I sent my kids to public school.

So will I vote you ask? I can’t say at this point. I’ve voted in every election since I was 21 years old, but I’m really turned off by all the candidates. It’s the only say that I have in the future of this country that my forefathers and I fought for.

No longer is this a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It belongs to the wealthy and they only worry about each other. They will decide who will be president.

They will decide which programs will be instilled, they will decide how my tax dollars will be spent. None of the candidates appear to be what I need for my future.

It just doesn’t matter who’s in there. My way of living will be the same (or maybe worse). I have no friends in Washington and I can expect no help from the leaders of this nation.

As disturbing as these notions are, as little as I mean to my government, I think Winston Churchill said it best: “Democracy is the worst form of government, next to all the other forms of government.”

So I will do as others do, live in a country where I mean so little and my opinions mean less so that I can enjoy freedom. It’s all I have.

ROBERT SMITH

South Point