The Candidates and Autism

While we spend what precious little time we have on this planet listening to one political party or another tell us what the other parties are doing wrong, we can at least rest when it comes to one position:  Autism.

Yesterday I was checking out resources from the CDC on Autism, and found that there was currently a Presidential committee dedicated to the development of and support for persons with developmental disabilities.  Of course, when you think about anything Presidential during the election year, you start to wonder what the candidates positions would be on such an important issue.  So, I started a little research. 

At first, I couldn't find anything on autism on their websites, though I admit I only ran a cursory search.  Then I went through the "Contact Us" links and emailed them.  The easiest candidate to email was John McCain, whose email setup was pretty straight forward.  I'm still waiting for a reply from the campaign, but I don't expect email contacts are really that high on any candidates priorities right now.  

Barack Obama's website was a little more difficult to navigate when it came to contacting the campaign.  It took several wrong clicks to get the right link, but I finally got the email sent off.  Within minutes, I got an automated email thanking me for my support of the candidate and my desire to campaign for him, with another note that the campaign doesn't have the time to personally reply to every email sent to them.  Hmm.  Interesting.  

So I did some more digging, and found that both candidates actually do have positions on their websites regarding autism and the current concerns the increased diagnosis rate has raised.  Essentially, they are the same.  Both candidates call for more funding for research to understand autism, and for early detection and support for families that need to help their child with autism reach their full potential.  Admittedly Barack Obama's position was more verbose than John McCain's position, but as many of you who read my long posts know, verbosity doesn't necessarily mean better content.  ^_^  

So at least for those parents who have children with Autism, the choice doesn't matter:  Both John McCain and Barack Obama will make the same commitment to the discovery, treatment, development, and overall welfare of people with autism in our society.