Undecided: An Election Retrospective

I was undecided well into the presidential election campaign. I don’t think I’m particularly partial to old white guys, but to an extent, I felt like McCain deserved to be president. McCain paid his dues, military service in combat, POW in Viet Nam, struggled with physical injuries and other personal obstacles, both in and out of politics, yet never lost the determination to succeed in government. We had a military situation that needed sound military judgment. My gawd, how could you fault the man for experience and focus? Who was Barack Obama? A junior Senator on a fast track end-run into the big time? Looked like a light-weight.

There was the economy, which I held Bush responsible for ruining by a combination of stupidity and Reagan policies, not that the difference is clear. I voted twice against Bush in futile opposition to a small man in a big job who literally turned the presidency into a joke, but I also thought McCain was not a small man. Obama I wasn’t sure about, and to tell you the truth, I’m still not a hundred per cent sure, but I’m hopeful.

Palin was a stroke of genius. I guess like a lot of people, I was dazzled by the canny political audacity of matching the experienced, old-guy Republican politician with a bright, capable, effective Republican woman more in touch with a different generation and a different constituency. It took me a couple of days to figure out that only some of the vision was true, however. She was in touch with a different constituency. Catch is, that constituency amounts to a small proportion of voters, those for whom a ditzy personality is the only criteria for choosing somebody to tell them what they should do. For them, Palin was perfect, but those weren’t the voters that needed an alternative, and Palin wasn’t just a poorly qualified prop, her selection was an insult to the many truly capable women involved in Republican politics. With somewhat mystified regret, I had to conclude that McCain was taking bad advice or bad drugs, or both, and after taking leave of his senses, his campaign seemed to dissolve into a floundering parody of purpose, served up by John Stewart on The Daily Show as comedy straight off the news service reports, no embellishment required, equaled only by the inevitable bumbling of “President Goofus.” Unfortunately for McCain, a lot of people seemed to recognize the last-ditch return to Bush/Rove/Cheney staple fear-tactics delivered by Palin for what it was, pathetic. Like everybody else, I wanted some inspiration, and I didn’t necessarily want to vote for Obama by default, but you could look at it that way.

I came from Alaska, but I don’t know what happened to the people up there. The only thing I can figure is that, like everybody else, oil made them stupid, and they had more oil, so they got more stupid. How else can you explain election of a governor without any qualifications? It’s great to be a down-home, turkey-ripping, sled- waxing, soccer mom, but if your best organizational assets are experience as Wasilla Solid Waste Management Home-coming Queen, and a sneaky, vindictive kind of administrative style, then you should maybe be in organized crime instead of state government, or who knows, maybe it’s the same thing. I can tell you from experience though, even in the old days, not everybody living back there in the woods was an environmental idealist. I just never realized how seriously they took their work. I see that Palin has been organizing an exploratory committee for the next election, but I hope she will be no more dangerous than Punxsatawney Phil and only stick her head out once every four years before she returns to her burrow.

Here's thinking for you.
Iffy