6 posts tagged “2008 election”
Much post-election grousing 'round here. Here's a new clip for one of the political parody websites I am fond of. Red or Blue, it ought to provoke a grin.
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 :-)
Was asked and volunteered to do poll work at our precinct's voting place, my son's old elementary school. I voted in the morning which was a madhouse, and did the 16:00 to 19:00 shift (polls close) in the afternoon.
Actually it was a bit anticlimactic, about 80% of the voters had already cast their ballots either directly or by absentee by that time, so the other 20%...... We stood around doing much of nothing most of the time
A bit fun was provided by 2 other volunteers, on opposite sides of the fence, one from the neighboring state of Maryland, and the otter a bit new to this area. there was loud debate and pretty aggressive pushing of sample ballots. The rest of us, all of us stood and did our bit, but it was much more civil, caught up with neighbors we had not seen for a while, I saw my son's elementary school principle, the first I've seen of her since he went on to Jr. high, etc. Made new acquaintances too.
So I guess a lesson or takeaway from this is that perhaps we should not let ourselves be worked into a blinkered frenzy by pundits, analysts or other political 'experts' because someone thinks they have the right to chew our intellectual food for us and so earn a living . We can disagree and still be civil about it.
Now that the polls here have closed, I am going to warm myself up (its drizzly damp and chilly here and I've been in it for the past 3 hours) then relax and then do what Harry Truman did on election night in 1948: go to bed and read about it in the papers the next morning.
God, only one more friggin' day until the political blabber on both sides stops!
Spotted this is the Sunday edition of one of the local newspapers. Am not looking for a new home (but given the change, I'd like to move out and flip the bird to the anal retentives who think they are 'in charge' of the HOA) so I don't usually give this section a second glance, but yesterday was different.
In the now ten years I have lived here, I do not ever recall seeing something like this.
As far as my 'hood goes, there are 3 newly-built McMansions sitting vacant and another older house also for sale- for quite sometime. But rather than worry about the problems of others, I need to be more concerned about keeping the roof we have over our heads
The son is on a 4 day break, today being a holiday so the teachers can finalize grades for the 1st quarter (already!) and tomorrow of course is Election Day with all schools closed. Usually on such long weekends, WWIII breaks out between his mother and he, over too much time on the Xbox, computer, his grades (which really aren't that bad), why he isn't like so and so's son...... Scheech. So far its been fairly quiet.
Oh yes, that is tatami you see in the photo.
I for one will be soooo glad when 11/4 passes into history. About a 3rd of the in-coming phone calls are either prerecorded messages, or personal pleas that Armageddon is now upon us, so vote for...... And don't get me started on trying to watch a television program of choice. I'd actually like to see if there are statistics on any reverse affect there may be by a candidate's insistence of barging into a time (like a sporting event) in which I at least do not want to be bothered, to breathlessly tell why he is the best candidate and his opponent actually has cloven hooves, a tail and horns.
My son came up with a good idea; redo our voice mail message along the lines of: "Thank you for calling, but we have made up our minds as to who we will cast our ballots for, so please don't waste anymore of your time or ours.' That said, I will be volunteering at our local polling place.
Political immaturity, aka, the adults are not in charge has reared its head here. Its gone up a notch here in Northern VA. Wrote before that some people here take their politics waaay tooo seriously in proportion to themselves.
My dentist, who lives and practices within walking distance (how convenient!) has been for as long as I have gone to him, been a solid Republican and he is not shy about letting the world know who he supports as he has in the past 3 Presidential elections, had large signs up in his yard, which also faces a busy commuter route.
Besides his passion for Republican candidates, his other passion is gardening: he plies all of his patients with tomatoes etc., during the summer, and grows very large pumpkins which he shares with the kids at the very close by Wakefield Elementary school and also submits them in state-wide competition.
Well, a person or persons, with a less than healthy respect for the 1st amendment, decided to let make a political statement by trashing my dentist's banners and vandalizing one of the pumpkins he grew this year.
To me, and what should be for anyone else, while you may not agree with his political views, he has the inalienable right just as anyone else has, to publicly express them without this sort of intimidation: yes, that is what this amounts to.
One of the local TV channels did a piece on it today and I must say my dentist was quite restrained: he's usually much saltier in his choice of words.
Remember, the line that prevents one person from freely expressing their thoughts and that which keeps you and I from expressing ours is uncomfortably thin.
