0 for 3

Need to get this out of my system and move on. 

None of the 3 candidates I votes for secured office/place in history.  Disappointed?  Yes.  Perhaps the President-elect will prove a good choice, but what bothered me and many others who did not cast their ballots for him are the peripherals, as I call them, who offered their support but no attempt was made to put any distance between them and him.

Why the the Republicans fail? Partly just a gut level reaction to vote against the current President.  The Republicans have also after basically  uninterrupted governance since Reagan (the Clinton's should send a card every year to Ross Perot, thanking him for his assistance) have gotten fat, dumb, indolent , complacent and have lost their way.   The Republican Party  may also showing signs again reverting to its bad pre-Reagan habit of eating its own children. I now have a Democratic Congressman-elect, who is so distasteful even Democrats held their noses and voted, all because the sitting Republican Congressman was deemed '"impure  and treated badly. So he said, "Hey, it ain't worth it, so I'm just going to resign and I'll see you in November."

There was also political weariness of the same old same old. That is what kept Clinton from securing the party nomination for herself and stained McCain somewhat as well.  McCain for his part, played to an audience that was already his, and he did not project himself as the maverick he can be: I should know as I was part of an auto industry lobbying visit with McCain's staff, a quietly testy one, over a bill on automobile regulation in which it was clear the Senator was carrying the water for our opponents,

I have wondered what happened to the PUMAs (Party Unity, My Ass!), supposedly a large bloc of women voters, who supported Clinton, very unhappy and disenfranchised with the nominating process, who were supposed to make sure they would do what they could do to ensure McCains' election.

The economy?  Sure, but the blame lies not just with one person or party, many on both sides of the Sile are culpable

Wither Bush?  One thing I have carried with me is what I learned from a history professor, in that one cannot make snap historical judgements,  or create insta-history as so many in this town continue to do.  History is a slow process of letting the dust settle, having people divorce themselves for the passions of that time and reflect more maturely and measuredly. 

Harry Truman may have had a lower approval rating when he left office than Bush now has.  Eisenhower is commonly thought of as a middling President, yet it was his Federal Highway Act which created our Interstate system of roads, made suburbia possible and the life style we have to day.  Gerald Ford, was subjected to a volcanic blast of fire for his decision to pardon Nixon and it probably cost him his reelection, but it was over time, the right thing to do.  So with Bush, we will have to wait and see.

So now there is euphoria and dancing in the streets, but as I told my son to tel his tormentors on the school bus, wining an election is one thing, effective, successful governance is quite another.  That said,  despite the nagging from my wife, I'll take away the campaign sign I have on the front lawn when the neighbor 2 doors down takes away his :-)