The first time I voted for President was in 1988; I cast my absentee ballot for Michael Dukakis, and watched him go down to bitter defeat. There were many, many reasons for that defeat, but the moment I remember thinking “he’s going to lose” was not the famous photograph of the Duke of Brookline in a tank but a back page in one of the newsmagazines, Time<\/I> or Newsweek<\/I> I think, but quite possibly the Sunday Magazine of either the New York Times<\/I> or the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/I>. I remember that it was on glossy paper, so it must have been a magazine of some kind, and I think there was one of those half-tone blue-gray backgrounds that I associate with the newsweeklies more than with the ones that go along with the Sunday paper.\n
The page was a side-by-side column, written by supporters of the two (major-party) candidates, and I don’t remember who the writers were. The journal (whichever it was) had asked for a note written as if from the future, near the end of their preferred candidate’s first term. The Democrat wrote a gentle note saying, in effect, that it’s been a tough four years, and we’ve all had to make sacrifices, but we are starting to see some real results, and if we continue to work hard, we are going to really lick the serious problems in this country. The Republican said, in effect, that he knows you aren’t really listening, and he doesn’t blame you, because you’ve had it really good for the last four years, and it’s just going to keep getting better.\n
Oh, there were policy things in there. The Republican, for instance, mentioned how nice it was to have more of your tax money back. The Democrat, I believe, talked about the reduced number of homeless on the streets. But the policies weren’t important. The overwhelming effect was simple, and had less to do with the policy proposals than the basic description of the universe. Republicans: US Rules! Democrats: US is fucked! Republicans: Take a break! Democrats: Buckle down!\n
I looked up from the paper and thought “That’s it. It’s over. We lose.”\n
Now, I can’t honestly claim that the bulk of the voting population saw anything even remotely like this article, or that they even noticed the difference in worldviews. Maybe the real tipping point in the election really was the photo of the tank. Or (as I have also claimed) that the Democrats ran against a popular President, rather than his unpopular Vice-President (who was the actual candidate). But to me, in my rather hazy memory, it’s a symbol.\n
In the four presidential elections since then, and in the handful of other races I’ve paid close attention to, I’ve been on the lookout for how that different perception of the world comes into play. In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton avoided the buckle down!<\/I> taint, and for all that he ran on Change!, he didn’t (I think) give off the impression that he that we were all screwed. In 1996, Bob Dole was the one giving off the smell of screwed-ness, and it didn’t work for him at all against the triumphant incumbent. In 2000, strangely, Al Gore took up the fight of the People against the Powerful, and won a very close election against a challenger who said that things were pretty good. In 2004, Our Only President (not, strange to say, the victor of the previous election) emphasized the hard work that he<\/I> had been doing, and seemed to me to be saying that we were, if not screwed, at least beleaguered. And he won that one, by a whisker.\n
This year, I read the whole field as saying the same thing: We’re screwed, and we need to buckle down, and maybe after my first term things will begin to turn around. This is not just the Democrats, who may be expected to gripe, having been altogether out of power until just recently, and who will be challenging the incumbent party of an extraordinarily unpopular President. It’s Republicans, too. Senator Brownback says<\/a> “Our land needs healing. Our people need hope. Our world needs help.” Governor Romney says<\/a> “If there ever was a time when innovation and transformation were needed in government, it is now. We have lost faith in government, not in just one party, not in just one house, but in government.”\n Twenty years ago, it was obvious to me that this country and its voters did not want to hear that we were screwed, that we needed to spend a long time working very hard to fix our serious and significant problems. We wanted to hear that things were great. I know, not all of us. Some of us voted for the Duke. Not enough.\n Now, are things different? Is it obvious that we’ve got a lot of work to do? I don’t just mean in Iraq (where an irresponsible candidate could intimate that all we need to do is pack up our troubles in an old kit bag and head home). Do we know that it’s time to buckle down on global warming? Do we know that it’s time to buckle down on our infrastructure? Do we know that it’s time to buckle down on income inequality? Do we know that it’s time to buckle down on health care? Or will we vote for someone who will tell us that it’s all right, that we can elect a President who will soothe us and take care of things, and tell us that we really are all right, and that things really are getting better and better, every day and in every way?\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>, The first time I voted for President was in 1988; I cast my absentee ballot for Michael Dukakis, and watched him go down to bitter defeat. There were many, many reasons for that defeat, but the moment I remember thinking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17970,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448\/revisions\/17970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"