(Seriously.)
SFG has a fantastical theory that toward the very end of the campaign McCain is going to get up on stage one day and say, "Hey Whippersnappers, I've had enough. I just can't do this anymore. This just isn't what I signed up for way back in 1971. Please, do yourselves, do
America a favor, Save America, I know I don't deserve what I'm asking for, but give me the America that I was tortured for way back when when I booked at the Hanoi Hilton. I just can't play this game anymore. No more idiotic mudslinging, no more dirty politics. I don't want to win if I'm gonna win this way. I'm out. Vote for Obama. I just can't take this shit anymore. It's just not cool." and then he walks off stage, walks into a voting both, keeps the curtain open and publicly votes for Obama/Biden and smiles maniacally while he pushes the lever. And that is it.
And then we win.
Finally.
Wouldn't that be awesome?
I'm a bit more skeptical however. Even in my Vouvray haze I am a cynic.
Je suis le cynic.* I bitterly remember 2004. That sunny morning we all voted, thinking it was
in the bag. The sky was as open and blue in Manhattan as it was in New Mexico. I mean, really? Who would eat that slop? Seriously? We are free thinkers. We are optimists. We are Americans. We know what we need.
And I remember the next day. Rainy, bleak. People spontaneously bursting into tears at the Starbucks on 2nd Ave and 11th St.
We had been had by the liberal media. I remember a friend who writes for the NYT saying that the reporters on the Kerry junket were getting on the train to DC the night before because it was
in the bag. Seriously in the bag. Sigh.
I am not convinced that we will succeed. I live in a liberal, urban bubble. I've gotten back into Keith Olbermann.** I don't have a clue what the rest of the country is thinking. However, s'ppse, if my mother is any barometer of politcal apathy
("I think they're all crooks"), she is kinda keen on Obama. He peaks her interest. He's refreshing. She will most likely vote for him. Though maybe she's not such a great barometer after all, considering she, ex-nun-who-moved-in-with-a-married-Jew, and eventually bore me, Ms. Vice-Crimes-Should-Be-Legal-Jesus-Christ-Please!***, so..maybe not...so much. Sigh.
Maybe I am just being a pessimist tonight. Maybe my chakras aren't in sync and I just can't see the big picture here. Maybe I am just projecting my own fears about my business onto my political schematic. Or maybe I'm right. I just don't know. Blargh.
*Sorry, had to do this. Recently finished Updike's Couples, a book about a bunch of affluent Cape Cod marriages who drink stiff martinis and swing while they're pregnant, and one of the characters always finishes his sentences with a French translation of what he's just said in English.**If you haven't seen it, I encourage all to youtube Keith Olbermann's Special Comment of 9/10/08 on McCain's statement that he "knows how to get Bin Laden." Well, Sir, if you do, will you notify the proper authorities because 3000 people's families are waiting for justice. Or what, you will only tell us how to get him after you're elected? ***I am 42% convinced I am actually the love child of this union, rather than of whom they tell me is my father, a psychologically and spiritually depressed suburban WWII Lithuanian refugee child with (oddly enough) an MSW and an MBA remarried converted social worker turned tangentially Episcopalian Star Trek TOS fan who likes nice cars and hefty tax write-offs. I'm sure you know the type.
