I believe that honesty, integrity, and competency should be the values that we cherish in our elected officials, and that the most powerful men in our country should be winners of their offices, not buyers.
I have been in the middle of political battles for my entire life. I have become the person I am today because I had to endure things as a young kid that most people never have to deal with their entire life. Until you have someone you love get unjustly smeared in every newspaper that gets out at your front door, you do not know anger.
Several years ago, my father was pitted against a woman with the power to outspend him 15:1. My father had dedicated the previous 12 years of his life to serve his constituency, and I often had to experience the negative effects of that. Many athletic events were not attended, and many more engagements were broken at the last second in the interest "of the people," and that was good, because that was what he did and the world around him was grateful for it.
That woman?...she beat my dad with that spending power, and the people whom he represented lost their voice. There isn't a day that goes by that my father doesn't think about that experience, and although he doesn't talk about it often, he lost his faith in the democratic process that day.
I don't want to lose my faith, but time and time again, people prove that it is money and showmanship that impresses, not credentials integrity.
I believe that the times of office for sale must end. Our future should be left up to someone who cares, not the highest bidder. Until we hold candidates responsible for their claims, nothing will change. But I believe in the people, I believe in their knowledge, and I believe in the future. I believe that with a little more time and care, tomorrow will be a better day than today, and that leaders like my father will once again be the victors in a part of our world that had lost its way.
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I think you have all the makings for a good story. The narrative story is really compelling, and it relates very well with the communal relevance. One idea to mull over would be to switch around the order of your essay. Maybe start out with the narrative, and then move into your "call to action", so to speak. The reason I say this is because the beginning made it sound like you were going to go into something about the upcoming election, or something on a more global scale. Then you shrunk down into something really personal, and then went big again. So maybe by starting with the narrative, it wouldn't be such a major switch.
Oh, and I liked how you didn't get "preachy". You definitely had an opinion, but you didn't start blaming people outright. I never really got the impression that you were blaming the other candidate, or the voters; it was more that you were just upset with the process that lead to such a depressing outcome.
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