What is change?

Even if you've been living under a rock for awhile, you've heard the mantra of "change" that has accompanied this presidential campaign. It started with Barack Obama's "It's time for a change" and has been picked up by John McCain in the form of "Change you can believe in." Those sound good, but what exactly is change?

I change my clothes when they get dirty. When I'm hankering for something different to eat, I can change my mind when I order at a restaurant. If you look under the cushions of my couch, you'll find some spare change.

Of course, our presidential candidates are speaking of a different kind of change, but is change necessarily always a good thing? What if I go to buy a new car only to find out that it's a lemon? What if a man gets tired of his wife and decides he'd rather have a new one? What if the weatherman reports that, instead of tomorrow being sunny and pleasant, it's going to be cold and rainy? Change isn't always good.

When it comes to politics, everyone must work to weed through all of the rhetoric to discover what's really going on. What are the candidate's views on the economy? On healthcare? On the war in Iraq? On how much of a role government should play in your daily life? Sadly, I don't believe the average American truly knows what either candidate really believes about the issues.

So here's what's probably going to happen. People will vote for a change of scenery. They will vote against the current administration - anything for a change in the white House. Both candidates have promised change and, if they are true to their words (whatever those words mean), then there will be a change in Washington. But instead of voting for a candidate, they will be voting against another. That isn't always a bad thing but it never hurts to be real careful about the change that you want to see happen. Once you vote for change, you're stuck with it for four years.