Don’t Confuse ‘Not Him’ with ‘Good’

I am forty-three,
married long enough to know
love is not blind—
it is chosen, examined, recommitted to
after hard conversations at the kitchen table.

I wish my country worked that way.

Instead we are handed candidates
like clearance rack apologies—
creased at the edges,
smelling faintly of ambition and donor money—
and told to clap
because at least they aren’t him.

Yes, he is loud as a car alarm at 3 a.m.,
all ego and grievance and sharp-edged theater.
A man who mistakes cruelty for strength,
confusion for strategy,
volume for virtue.

But his being an ass
does not crown his opponents saints.

I have watched the blue banners wave
as if moral superiority were policy.
As if indignation were legislation.
As if saying the right words
were the same as doing the right things.

It is not.

I have voted with hope,
voted with dread,
voted holding my wife’s hand
like we were crossing a street
with traffic coming too fast from both directions.

And afterward, again and again,
that quiet question rises in me—
Is this the best that they have?

Is this the sharpest mind?
The bravest heart?
The most honest voice we can summon
from three hundred million souls?

And somehow, impossibly,
it gets worse.

More scandal.
More spin.
More smiling faces promising reform
while clutching power like a life raft.

I am tired of choosing
between disappointment and disaster.

I want leaders who understand
that love of country is not performance art,
that public service is not a branding exercise,
that being less terrible
is not the same as being worthy.

Scrutinize them all.
Interrogate every promise.
Hold every party to the same fierce light
we hold our daughters to—
“Show me your work.
Tell me why this matters.
Prove you deserve my trust.”

Because democracy is not a team sport.
It is a marriage contract.
And I have learned, in love and in life,
that commitment without accountability
is how things rot from the inside.

So no—
one man’s ugliness
does not excuse another’s mediocrity.

I will keep asking the hard question.
I will keep expecting better.
I will keep believing
that somewhere in this vast, stubborn country
there must be leaders
who are more than the least awful option.

There are harsher words I could use.
Trust me.
I have them lined up behind my teeth
like stones.

But my daughter reads what I write.

So I sand the edges.
I trade fury for clarity.
I choose language that teaches
instead of language that burns.

Because she is watching
how I disagree.
She is learning
whether anger must become cruelty
to be strong.

And I will not teach her that.

I want her to know
you can demand better
without becoming bitter,
you can call out failure
without losing your own decency,
you can say
This is not good enough
without setting the whole world on fire.

Until then,
I will vote with clear eyes,
with skepticism braided into hope,
and with the stubborn faith
of a woman who has survived enough
to know

we deserve better than this.

© Susie Stiles-Wolf