Love Thang

With the desire but not the time to write a longer endorsement, I'll make it quick. I'll be voting for Obama. No surprise to regular readers, I'm sure.

The choice is between divided government or a one-party town. The former hasn't exactly worked well, and if nothing else the latter showed how much is possible in the absence of effective opposition. Assuming Democrats would use their own unfettered power to reverse and repudiate the current administration's most disastrous policies, a return to one-party rule should mean a welcome cleansing, at least initially. On Obama specifically, and without rehashing previous posts, I think it's crucial that the next president is above all a clear thinker, someone with intellectual flexibility and independence. Thanks to McCain's eager and ultimately ironic embrace of the 3am phone call issue, the Russia-Georgia conflict and the candidates' reactions to it caused my opinions of them to diverge sharply and irreversibly. Their choices of running mates and their conduct during the economic crisis confirmed those opinions.

For Obamacons there is of course a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, of buyer's remorse somewhere down the road -- maybe even the morning after the election. Will the taboo love affair survive Obama's first massive corporate bailout or Supreme Court nomination? It's been easy to dismiss most of the hysterical rantings by McCain and Palin. But something that resonated with me, though not quite in the way the McCain campaign and its flacks intended, was the phrase "The One." It worries me that too many Obama supporters believe one person can snap his fingers and solve this country's daunting problems. Hope is a great thing. But as the economy has imploded in recent months and the desperation out there has become palpable, the size of the crowds and the hope that surrounds Obama have made me a bit uneasy. I don't mean hope in the traditional "government will fix things" sense that the Democratic Party represents -- we all know what will happen to the size of government if Democrats control Washington, and we can thank George Bush for setting a fine example -- but hope in a more poignant, human sense. Where is the line between hope and inevitable disappointment, between faith and unrealistic expectations? Maybe we'll find out.

Related, a broad swath of this country has been turned off to conservatism and the Republican Party, perhaps permanently. If Obama wins and four years from now the economy hasn't improved and his approval rating is at 30%, where will those people turn -- politically, socially, and culturally? History has some pretty nasty examples of what can happen after dynamic, galvanizing agents of "change" either don't meet expectations or for whatever reason are interrupted in their mission. Throw in wildcards like the possibility of another attack on U.S. soil, followed no doubt by Dolchstoss-flecked charges from the opportunist Right. One of the themes of this space has been the creeping malevolence and madness out there, and it became obvious during the last month of the campaign. That must be turned back, especially in desperate economic times. McCain has made it clear he would stoke the madness, if only because as president it's unlikely he would suddenly discover something substantive to say and a coherent way of saying it.

It's a risqué fling, and it may not survive the first morning of smudged makeup and cigarette breath. But our divorced spouse turned out to be terrible in the sack, and at least for now the bed's a fun place to be.