so, it's come down to this, eh? the inevitable post-election blog entry and boy, is it lengthy.
i was optimistic that kerry would win. i'm pessimistic that he'll take ohio now.
here's the deal though, no matter how much contempt i have for our current president, i will support the president when he retakes the oath. i know i will disagree with what he does a lot of the time and, more importantly, the way he goes about doing what he does.
but he is my president and he won decisively this time. and i'm sick of the "poisonous atmosphere" of the united states. i felt this atmosphere beginning to seep in the middle of 2003 sometime and i definitely helped contribute to it.
yes, i'm disappointed that the entire federal government is in republican hands. a split government is the best possible scenario. i'm upset the daschle lost s. dakota. i'm upset that (it looks like) my house representative (a dem) lost his reelection bid. i'm excited that obama won. i'm upset that my governor will no longer be a democrat for the first time in 20 years.
this election defied all odds too. it seemed like the news recently has been nothing but bad news upon bad news. voter turnout was enormous and that typically means good things for democrats. the redskins lost. the dow ended up down. the job situation is worse than it was 4 years ago, although it is marginally better than 2 years ago...
jen posted an entry in her blog referring to the frequent discussions of where people would move should Bush win reelection. i think we can all agree that the talk of moving was hyperbole (except in a few cases, i imagine..)
**for what it's worth, i was committed to moving to prague long before the primaries or discussion of the 2004 election even began.**
now is the time to rededicate ourselves to our country. there were some lapses in judgment (like voting down gay marriage) that will be looked down on in shame in the distant future. for now, that is where our country lies and we'll have to work with it.
i asked my father this morning/last night (for him): when did our country become so conservative? he said that walter cronkite had pinpointed the 1960 election when the south started trending republican. sounds reasonable to me.
in a world where progression seems to have been marked by increasing liberalism in attitudes, this is a step backwords. to be stuck in an old world ideology based on fundamentalism is frightening, but it is something that will be reversed in time. i might not live to see it. you might not live to see it. but i am confident that it will happen.
considering that there is still discrimination today, in an almost more evil form - that of subliminal bigotry - we are still better off than we were 50 years ago. and no matter how many steps backwards we take, there will always be plenty of push to step forward as well.
and this is where the democrats come in. john kerry was a flawed candidate. i liked him but i voted for him more as a defensive vote rather than a positive vote. i didn't want bush to win.
anyway, the democrats need to do some major reassessment. what bush has been doing is mixing in his religious beliefs with his policies and that is highly problematic. john kerry said that he believed in god but would not mix politics and religion.
why was religion an issue? let's have a candidate that focuses on secular issues. let's have a candidate that can maintain a steady logic. i don't believe that kerry's ideas changed ("flip-flopped", if you will) during the course of the campaign, but rather his expression of his ideas did. he didn't have a straight pattern. there was too much nuance. there was too much discussion of discussion. this is where the idea of flip-flopping comes from, because different ways of expression yields different interpretations. problem.
solution. find a populist candidate. somebody who can speak to the rural vote. edwards had it, but he let it take a back seat to kerry's ideology. dean had it, but the media screwed him over nicely. hillary clinton is a good candidate, but she's not populist. plus, the same vitriol that dems feel towards bush can easily be found in reps regarding hillary. i want a woman president, i do. but keep her out of it - she would get my support 150% if she were to be nominated, but i don't want another campaign like this.
judging from obama's performance in illinois, he could be a good candidate sooner rather than later. they'll harp on his experience like they did edwards, but it didn't hurt edwards. in the debates he proved that he's competent. that's all that was necessary.
a populist will offer something truly different. a populist would hark back to a more divided political system where the differences are not just nuances...
i'm taking my time reading thomas friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree and i just read a chapter today that talked about why political parties in free-market capitalist societies don't seem that different today. i won't bother rehashing his arguments, but you can find them in the chapter "The Golden Straitjacket".
the thing with populism, though, is that it will go against the trend towards globalization - you need the center people who aren't opposed to sending jobs overseas. it's the nature of globalization and globalization is the way our world works now, for good or bad.
which brings us back to our president. much more dangerous than sending jobs overseas is alienating ally governments. the role of government now, according to friedman, is to interact with other governments, corporations and super-empowered individuals (like osama bin laden, for better or worse). the type of interaction depends on the relationship.
globalization requires global cooperation. by continuing to antagonize foreign governments, we will dig ourselves a deep hole. not to mention spending money we don't have and cannot perceive having any time soon. corporations and individuals can ruin governments. they can pull their money out of economies, causing a massive economic downturn and thereby causing unrest in the populace.
there will not be riots from this election, as we've already learned. there will be unhappiness and a lot of it.
but it's time to put on the rose-colored glasses for a moment:
the country has spoken in one of the largest turnouts in recent U.S. electoral history. George W. Bush will be our president for the next four years as well and it's time to cross your fingers and hope that maybe he can stop being stubborn for a minute, see some of the mistakes from the previous four years and act to correct them.
there's no viable reason to think that we'll invade iran in the next four years, in my opinion, unless it is with the world (and europe, in particular) backing us up. the army is mired in iraq and the country won't support another war, unless there are extreme circumstances.
hopefully he'll act to rectify the fact that he has underfunded every domestic program under federal control. one would hope, that if security really is such a big concern, that maybe he would start putting more money in securing our ports a little better.
or how about education? why create a debatable education program that holds schools and school systems accountable for student performance and then deliberately underfund it?
so, let's support our president. he's an American and he will make mistakes, even if one of them is not acknowledging said mistakes. he will make politically questionable decisions and we are welcome to object - i'm sure i will be the first to do so in many cases - it's the nature of democracy. this is, indeed, a contradictory impulse and it will probably unravel to being one-sided yet again. from me he has a clean but paper-thin slate. but for the moment, i'll give G.W. the benefit of the doubt. heck, if for any reason at all, i suppose my sanity takes top slot for me - i will not and cannot live with this ugliness inside me for four more years.
and... well... if kerry does happen to win Ohio, well, i'll be happy. i simply don't think he will due to the substantive margin laying between the two candidates.
Posted by iain at November 3, 2004 05:27 PM