What is that worn out phrase--as American as Apple Pie? It seems like a lot of people in this country are hungry for some good old fashioned views, and as I write this it is sometimes hard to figure out whether those old-fashioned thoughts are recalling 1892, 1992 or 2004. Hurricane Sarah has arrived to reignite the culture wars, and the election has certainly taken a completely unexpected detour. She is the Belle of the Ball right now, whether you like her or not.
It will be interesting to watch what happens for the next 60 days. The Republican convention was at times surreal, and John McCain's calls last night for bipartisanship, his statements that the GOP had made mistakes and such was the weirdest of them all. The speech would have worked if Lieberman was the VP, but with the crowd all gaga over Ms. Palin and her self-described pit bull style, it seems clear that John McCain is marching to the beat of his own different drummer all alone. The crowd is with her.
It is also interesting to me that Palin helped Obama raise more than $10 million yesterday. If there was any chance the Democrats would be complacent and overconfident down the stretch, she has made certain that won't happen. In the end, though, she is simply the latest great sideshow attraction created by Rove, the Evil Genius.
She is meant to mesmerize us, fire us up or drive us mad. Because as long as we are all talking about Sarah Palin, her attempts to fire the Wasilla librarian for not banning books Sarah didn't like, the relative merits of different actors in Trooper Gate, her views on hunting wolves from airplanes (she's for it), her family life and whether it is in or out of bounds---as long as the election is about stuff like that, it won't be about stuff that matters. Real issues, like 8 straight months of job losses and an unemployment rate of more than 6% for the first time in 5 years. Real issues like mortgage meltdowns that are now rippling out of the subprime market and creating a credit crunch across the board, driving housing prices (and values) down and bankruptcy and foreclosure up. Real issues like why the Republicans did not mention the economy once during their convention even though it is the number one issue on the minds of most voters heading into November. Issues the McCain-Palin ticket cannot win on, issues they do not want to talk about.
We all have moments of nostalgia, and a longing for simpler times that we remember more fondly than the realities of life in these uncertain days. Some people find their old-time religion in the Reagan era, or the Bush-Quayle days. Others think of the peace and prosperity we all enjoyed during the Clinton-Gore years when the stock market took off, the deficit went down, and Wall Street was the envy of the world.
Me, I also have my moments of longing for the past. In my case it is a deep longing for the America I grew up being taught about. The one where we hold these truths to be self-evident, that everyone is created equal. The one where my pastor proclaimed loudly from the pulpit that the most important freedom in America was the freedom of religion, and its surest protection was the wall of separation between church and state envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. The one where we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, promote the general welfare, ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense promise to respect, honor and defend the Constitution. The one where we dreamed big and were asked to work together to make those dreams come true. That is the America I miss most. The one that was before the culture wars. The one the Republicans seem to have completely forgotten ever existed.
2 comments:
I really like your last paragraph, although to be fair many Democrats seem have forgotten about that vision of the United States as well. Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe we'll win back that vision for the United States soon.
Your point that separation of church and state is good for the church can't be emphasized enough. John Locke made the case more eloquently than I ever could in his "Letter Concerning Toleration." I wonder how many of our candidates for office have read that important treatise?
Probably not enough of them. But also to be fair, most of the ones who have are the probably the ones who went to law school. Baptists used to be the most adamant proponents of separation of church and state. I was raised Baptist. But I honestly can't say that very many Baptists believe in that anymore either.
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