Familiarity's Result

Roger Abramson wonders about the emotional reaction of one blogger to casting her vote for Barack Obama. It got me thinking:

I suppose that it is a function of both my age and the fact that I deal with government as part of my work, but it has been years (considerably more than a decade) since I last got genuinely excited about supporting a political candidate. I have a political philosophy that causes me to support one candidate or another, but I never really get terribly excited about the men and women I am voting for or against.

If I were more in agreement with Sen. Obama's politics, I can see where I might be a bit more moved than usual because of what his candidacy represents in terms of the historic racial issues that have divided and still divide the country, but even with that, I don't think I would become terribly excited about the individual.

In some ways I envy those who can.