Interview

I chose to interview my manager at work. His leadership skills with his work ethic and employees helped to make him an interesting candidate for my interview. I know that he has very strong opinions on things and I was interested to hear his thoughts on a political level. The key experiences that helped to shape his political identity started with the fact that he came from a divorced family. He said this shaped his view to understand hard work and never giving up. It helped in teaching him the value of giving back to the community and helping others in need. He promotes this in his work ethic as well and helps to set an example for the rest of us.

My manager considers himself to be conservative fiscally/economically but very liberal when it comes to decisions of personal choice. He said anything to do with the economy he has a conservative view and most issues pertaining to personal beliefs and lifestyles he would more than likely have a liberal leaning view. Since we work for a bank he is very opinionated in his views of how we can become a better bank and what has changed that hurts us. He always is positive and upbeat when it comes to keeping customers happy while having a healthy banking environment. Some of the key issues that he values are repealing the health care bill, getting Americans back to work in full time jobs that can actually pay, legal immigration, energy production reforms, removing our military strategically from around the world as needed and corporate tax loopholes to name a few.

Some of the experiences that have caused me to be who I am are similar to my managers. I was raised by my mom along with my brother and sister. We learned at an early age to not take things for granted. We participated in our community by helping with a food pantry and even carrying food to people’s homes. In the winter if my mom saw a child outside without a hat or mittens she would knit some and me and my sister would deliver them to the family. My mom also stop for the neighborhood crime watch and wrote articles for the newspaper pertaining to the safety of the children along with the community we live in. all of this has helped in shaping me in being a strong independent woman that will always help someone in need. My mom is a very strong person and continues to help us in being better every day. While I have learned a lot from my past, my political identity has not been announced. While I may be very opinionated and always looking to do the right thing, I have yet to formally put my thoughts into actions and pick a person to lead our country with the same thoughts as my own. I think that each candidate show a mix of things that I agree with and therefore would be able to side with just one.

I learned that people tend to vote based on how they observe things. The way you are raised definitely plays a huge key in all of this. Everything is based on opinions of others and we have the right to choose and agree with whomever we can relate the most too. People vote for liberals and conservatives based on personal experiences. Voters are going to vote for things that they can see actively being changed. We want to see a difference in a lot of things for example health care and more people finding jobs. If we can actively see a significant change on these items, we are more likely to vote for the person that made this happen. Each city has its own mayor that makes the rules. When we see how this person can change its community then we feel secure and will support him with any other upcoming agenda topics. We then may use this one person as an example of what we trust and apply it outside the box when it comes to voting in the presidential elections. We are going to vote based on some sort of similarity.

Questions asked:

1. How did you vote in the last election? Why?

2. Why do you consider yourself a liberal, conservative, or independent?

3. What life experiences have shaped your political values and identity?

4. Who will you likely vote for in November?

5. What are your key issues that pertain to you, that influence your voting?

6. When you choose a candidate to vote for, do you believe in everything that they support or do you have some margin for disagreement?

7. Do you feel that having a democratic president makes a difference over a republican one?

8. Do you feel that President Obama accomplished a lot in his term and do you think that he should be re-elected?

9. What do you feel is one of the biggest issues that we face today? Have we fixed this or ignored it.

10. What do you hope to see change during the next presidential elections?