The Texas primary election turnout last Tuesday broke all records. I’d like to think that every voter carefully studied each candidate’s background and fully understood what each candidate would bring to the office, particularly the presidential candidates. In this election year, the stakes are high and the problems are many.

In Texas, nearly 30% of the Obama voters didn’t bother to vote for anyone else on the ballot. That suggests that those folks weren’t really up to speed on the other candidates. They went to the polls to vote for Obama, and that was the extent of their civic interest. Garry Mauro, former Texas Land Commissioner, losing gubernatorial candidate to George Bush and coordinator of the Clinton campaign in Texas, said he views the bigger drop-off rate among Mr. Obama's voters as a measure that they were more "candidate-oriented" than "issue-oriented."

"There are hundreds of people supporting Obama who don't have a clue why, so they can't vote for anybody else who they don't know anything about," Mauro told the Dallas Morning News.

While Miz Clinton won the popular Democrat vote in Tuesday’s primary, the delegate count is anybody’s guess owing to the convoluted Democrat caucus rules. It may be June before the results are known. I can’t imagine why anyone would set up a primary election like that. I like the way the Republicans do it. People vote, the votes are counted. Whoever gets the most votes wins and gets all the delegates. This caucus business sounds like a way of making mischief with the selection of delegates.

McCain beat Huckabee by 186,000 votes, or 51% to 38%. Ron Paul got 5%, with the other 6% going to  seven or so others who were on the ballot but no longer in the race. As you likely know, Huckabee dropped out as soon as the results were known. That leaves McCain and Ron Paul, which really means McCain as the nominee presumptive.

There has yet to be much discussion of the real issues in this campaign. McCain is talking about national security and he is the only candidate with much experience on the subject. The other two are talking, with sweeping gestures, about such empty verbiage as “change” and scrapping the way we manage our health care in favor of a new, as yet unexplained, “universal health care” modeled on failed systems in use in Canada and the UK.

 We have a real problem with oil prices. The traders have speculated the price up to a record $108 per barrel today. The Russians, Arabs and Venezuelans are getting stinking rich from us while our own billions of barrels of oil sit in the ground. We’re doing nothing because the Democrats in congress refuse to give the president anything he wants and because the Greenie Weenies and Global Warming freaks are running our energy policy. I want to hear what our prospective presidents intend to do about it—and when. Conservation or going back to the horse and buggy era isn’t going to solve the problem and neither is fuel derived from corn. Think about it the next time you go to the gas station.

Clinton and Obama told people in Ohio last week, that they would create new jobs. They didn’t say how. I’d like to hear them explain just how they would pull it off. Unions and high taxes are the major reasons that jobs went away in the first place. Both have promised tax increases if they’re elected. Who thinks manufacturing businesses are interested in returning to the rust belt when they can build their plants in business friendly Texas?

Most politicians craft a set of lies they think voters will believe. Voters should view political promises as nothing more than so much hot air. That way they won’t be disappointed when the promises don’t come true.