Is it a responsibility to vote for a president?

How often has it been evangelized that a responsible citizen will vote. But honestly can we really vote responsibly? How can one really know who would make a good president? Before George Bush became president the first time there were a lot of people that thought he was the best choice. Many of those same people have since changed their minds.

Until someone is president it is difficult to say what kind of president they will be. Most presidents were mostly unknown to the public before they ran for president.

So first off the candidates are unknowns. Unknown quantities until they make into the office then we see what kind of president they will be. Character is hard to know outside of the testing of it. I can honestly say I do not even know myself all that well. Things come out in a persons character under pressure that are completely hidden otherwise.

Second off it is even more uncertain what a president will have to face. Look at all the events in the past 20 years and tell me which ones were predictable. We do not know what the next president will have to face in the next 4 years and that makes choosing a president even harder. About the only thing we can say about the way we select a president is that if someone makes it to office then they have endured through the riggers of a presidential race. That is something at least. But enduring a presidential race is a far cry from enduring 4 years of being president.

Someone might say that if you stayed on top of current events and followed politics that you could reasonably make a good choice. I do not think so. Besides your day job and all the responsibilities of life you have precious little time to keep up with all of that. Even if you spent all your time immersed in news sources, events, and a myriad of other things such as finance, foreign countries and leaders etc... you still would not know enough to make a good choice. How much more is there that you don't know?

Honestly none of us know enough much less have the time to get the needed knowledge. Can anyone honestly say they predicted that Moscow would attack Georgia? There is no way we can know enough to say for certain who would make a good president.

It seems to me that it can not be a responsibility to vote for a president seeing that we have so little to go on in making an intelligent choice. It is more responsible to ask ones self if one really knows who the best choice is before deciding to vote.