compromising principles

The DNC has my number.

Literally.

This afternoon, I was resting on the couch trying to get some proto-heartburn to settle down, when the phone rang. I was expecting it to be a callback from a friend, but was instead greeted by a fundraiser for the DNC. He began with an explanation of who he was, so-and-so from some-TLA calling for the DNC. "We gotta get Bush outta the Whitehouse," he began. He must have been new, or maybe not very good at his job, or perhaps, giving him the benefit of the doubt, just really tired after calling a list of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, who'd rather not be bothered. (I'm pretty sure he wasn't a volunteer -- at some point he explained that blah-blah-blah-TLA was an independent fundraising organization that was contracted by the DNC.) I think he was going for "impassioned" but fell a little short. It went on, a series of sound-bites, all strung together. He had definitely spent some time thinking about what he was going to say, but I don't think it came out quite the way he had planned it. For one, people don't usually hear the "Uh"s when they're saying it in their head. I expect that they're supposed to start off with something in their own words to "make it more personal." He eventually got to the scripted part. It also came out a little stiff. "The Democratic party is rallying around John Kerry... blah. blah. blah."

I wasn't all that impressed by Kerry. Back when there were seven candidates, back before Clarke had even entered the race, I think Moveon.org gave all the candidates an opportunity to make their case. (Maybe it was MTV's Rock the Vote) Anyway, I wasn't all that impressed with Kerry. He didn't have much of a position on anything. He just came off as a guy who wanted to be President because that's what politicians were supposed to do. My opinion hasn't changed much. And I'm not sure Protectionism is the solution for the country's job problem. And I'm extremely unhappy with his public position on gay marriage. But I suppose he's finally started putting together a decent plan now that the campaign is really rolling. I can respect his Vietnam record. I appreciate that he's not rolling over to all the Whitehouse attacks. I believe he'll fight for better environmental policy. He's not a religious ideologue. And they got it right: "Anyone but Bush." Sometimes you make compromises.

So I pledged another donation. And after I hung up the phone, I realized that I compromised another one of my basic principles: "Never give money to any organization that contacts you with an unsolicited phone call." (I do make one exception to this: calls from the Cornell fencing team. I can still remember early morning trash clean-up after the football tailgate parties in order to make money for the team. I remember the trauma of making calls for the phone-a-thon to beg the alumni for money. I will never give a student a hard time -- and unfortunately, the school fundraisers know this and will thus continue to exploit them) I was supposed to ask the guy to put my number on the DNC do-not-call list. Write me a letter, don't call me. Especially when I'm not feeling well and trying to rest. But for the cause at hand, I forgot myself and gave in.

Life is all about compromises; you just have to make sure you know why you're making them, and realize that you're making them in the first place.