It was late 2007, our son was in kindergarten, and, as my wife and I became increasingly engaged in the upcoming 2008 presidential primary, we couldn't help but worry about how we were influencing his political views. Our house was being overrun by Obama signs, literature, buttons and news. As the primary got underway, we were dragging him to rallies, bringing him with us to canvass neighbors and making him help with chores so that his mom could phone bank. Reinforcements of his parents' views were everywhere he looked.

But we wanted to avoid the mistakes that our friends' parents made--many of our friends were raised in dogmatic households that treated opposing political viewpoints as the enemy. In many cases, this resulted in children who could not think for themselves when it came to politics. One of them, bless his proverbial heart, is 29 and still receives his voting cues from e-mails his dad forwards him. Others rebelled, and their relationships with their parents suffered accordingly. My wife's parents and my parents, on the other hand, were apolitical. This allowed us both to chart our own political paths. Like other friends who had similarly apolitical upbringings, the path we took veered left and was guided by common sense.

And we knew firsthand the precarious situation we would be placing our son in if we didn't tamp down our enthusiasm for Obama. In November of 2006, months of carelessly exposing our son to politics culminated in drama at the voting booth. As pollworkers were checking in my wife, silence broke, and our son loudly exclaimed to anyone in the room with two ears: "We're here to fire George Bush's friends!" Luckily, we were in friendly territory, and his declaration was met with laughter. Had it happened a few miles outside city limits, though, his innocence would've faced the wrath of partisanship.

Since then, we've tried to walk the fine line between teaching our son civic duty and avoiding swaying his views. Although he's been surrounded Obama paraphernalia since last year, we've made every effort to highlight that other points of view are okay. And we've emphasized that, while Obama might be the best candidate for mommy and daddy, our friendly neighbors might prefer John McCain (luckily, they don't). Whatever political path our son took, we wanted it to be based on the morals we taught him, a strong appreciation for human rights and, most importantly, common sense (inherited from his mother).

So you can imagine our pride when, while rummaging through his school homework folder, we discovered the following: