Canvassing

I’m going to start off by stating something that is not Politically Correct.

Sometimes, you can tell a book by its cover.

I’m not talking about books – I’m talking about people. And yes, I know, we shouldn’t judge based on outward appearances. We’re all guilty of doing so to varying degrees at varying times in varying situations. By blatantly not getting past a person’s outward-ness, yes, we run the risk of coming out poorer for it. Also to varying degrees.

But people do telegraph their opinions and stances by how they consciously choose to appear.

Consider this:

There’s a knock at your door. Before opening it, you pull aside the curtain on a side window to see who’s there. How would you react, and what would you think, in the following two circumstances:

A. You see a well-groomed, clean-shaved man in a business suit, a briefcase at his side.

B. You see a man with long hair, facial scruff, a jacket with lots of big colorful buttons on it, and a clipboard in his hand.

Me, I wouldn’t answer the door for either of them. But I think you’re a fool or a coward if you don’t admit you can tell the politics of each before you even speak with them.

Yesterday, exhausted after a long day of cleaning the house and taking care of the two little ones, I take a shower at 6 pm. My oldest suddenly comes bounding up the stairs: “Daddy, there’s a man knocking at the front door!”

Quickly I get dressed and run downstairs. Unfortunately, I don’t have a curtained side window, so I open the door. What’s facing me is not quite fully A and not quite fully B, but it’s a heckuva lot closer to B than A. My hackles raise with my defenses, and my immediate thought is, How do I get out of this gracefully?

I spent seven months working in Manhattan about eight years ago, so I’m used to being rudely interrupted from my daily activity by someone promoting some agenda that’s almost always against my core values. Usually when hurrying to catch a NJ Transit train. But all that was a long time ago, and apart from one John Kerry supporter and a Jehovah’s Witness, nobody’s come up onto my doorstep to waste my time.

Except this fool.

I open the storm door about a eighteen inches, eyebrows raised in a noncommittal yet inquisitive sort of way, and he begins his spiel. Oh, great. He’s shilling for some environmental group, and has a clipboard with names and addresses on it. I’m not really paying attention to what he’s saying as my mind is automatically trying to figure out what he’s gonna want from me. Besides my precious, oh-so-precious and rare time.

How do I tell him tactfully that ninety-nine percent of all environmental groups I know of have political agendas completely opposite to my beliefs?

How do I tell him that I think the global warming phenomenon is scare-mongering based on either incomplete science (at best) or incorrect science (at worst), hijacked by anti-free market and anti-traditional-values ideologues?

How do I tell him that government over-regulation in the environment is probably responsible for a lot of overpriced products out there?

How do I tell him that pending government regulation – and the possibility of further regulation – in the gray area of “environment” is undoubtedly helping to extend this recession?

How do I tell him that I kinda believe journalists and writers I’ve heard interviewed, who quip, “Environmentalists are like watermelons – green on the outside, and red on the inside”?

How do I tell him that, yes, I believe we should drill in ANWR – I’ve seen actual pictures of it and it looks like lunarscape – and that, yes, I do believe we should go ahead with limited and cautious expansion of nuclear power?

But I say none of this. Heat from my house is escaping out into the cold. (Why doesn’t my visitor decry this waste of energy?) My bare feet are starting to freeze, and I have the two little ones hovering about my legs like curious monkeys. I cut to the chase and bluntly ask, “What do you want from me?”

Oh, he just wants to jawbone with me over what their organization does and is planning to do. And he starts, but I interrupt: “Do you want me to sign a petition?” I point to his clipboard.

“These aren’t signatures. These are printed names.”

“Well, I see names and addresses. Do you want me to sign that?”

“These aren’t signatures.”

Yeah, dummy, I can see that. Obviously he’s going through my town having my neighbors print their names and addresses on his clipboard. I have to end this. So I say what I say when I have the misfortune to be trapped by a telemarketer. “Listen, I don’t give out any information about myself – ”

“So you don’t care?”

What? What’s this guy’s angle? Is he trying to insult me, or guilt me, or what? ’Cuz he sure isn’t trying to befriend me, which, as Abraham Lincoln famously said, is the best way to win someone to your cause.

I actually say – and I’m impressed how fast it rolled off my normally reticent tongue, “It’s not that I don’t care. I just don’t know a thing about your organization, and I’m not going to print my name on your paper there as if I agree with you guys.” Hey, man, I’m thinking, just because I’m hungry doesn’t mean I want to eat an old shoe. (I love that line!) I care about the environment, but I don’t think wrecking American society is the way to keep it safe.

He tells me their website.

“All right, I’ll check it out. Thanks.” I shut the door in his face.

Later, I did go online and checked them out. And you know what? Everything I assumed earlier about them turned out to be true. They have an endorsements page on their site, and out of thirty-six races from last year, all but three were democrats. If you want substantiating links, email me through this website.

Probably won’t get another unwanted visitor until sometime in the fall of 2012. Hope it’s some college kid trying to persuade me to vote Obama …