More Hopeful about 2008 elections

No matter who wins the primary race on the Democratic side, Clinton or Obama, I'll be happy. A McCain victory on the Republican side would also please me, and I may even learn to look on the bright side if Romney wins (despite his anti-immigrant race baiting).

I'm a Democrat who's voted Republican precisely once in her life. (My next door neighbor ran for registrar of voters.) Why am I so happy about the prospects of one or two particular Republican candidates?

Because for the first time in my politically conscious life, the American people may get a presidential election worthy of their attention.

What is a presidential election worthy of us? A presidential election in which both candidates are good options for moderate voters. An election in which much of the population feels it could vote either way and must really make a choice. Contrast this to the 2000 and 2004 elections, in which a small portion of the electorate was undecided and candidates instead focused on turning out their supporters.

Right now I'm pretty optimistic about the 2008 election. It might be the rare presidential election that makes me more proud to be an American.

I wasn't so sunny about the election a few weeks ago. Up until McCain's win in South Carolina and New Hampshire, I was pessimistic . In my mind's eye, I could picture the 2008 elections becoming a sorry, exhausting reprisal of the 2000 and 2004 elections: a campaign in which the culture wars feature front and center. In a moment of fatality after the Iowa caucus, I bet my husband one weeks of dish washing that Huckabee would win the Republican primary. (Despite the suds involved in losing this bet, I'm pretty happy that it is increasingly likely that I will lose.)

If you think about presidential elections since I became politically cognizant (1996 on), my prediction made sense. Of the three presidential races I recall, two placed the country's cultural dividing lines front and center: Bush v. Gore, and Bush v. Kerry. The candidates in these races seemed to loathe each other because their concepts of the United States differed so greatly (remember that moment in 2000 when Gore said he didn't hate Bush and Bush looked stunned?).

Here's to a 2008 election that might actually make Americans feel like they have something in common: a tough choice.

I married a huge dork

My sister and I once discussed (when both unattached) how we thought dorky men make ideal mates. Why? It was hard to put one's finger on it, but it has something to do with how dorks are generally substantive people with passionate interests. The fact that we both consider ourselves dorks doubtlessly contributed to this conclusion.

Last night, I discovered that my husband was even more precociously dorky than I previously thought. He let slip that he wrote a paper on the subject of Stalin in the third grade. The conversation unfolded something like this:

Me: What?! You wrote a paper on Stalin in the third grade?! [flabbergasted pause] What was the assignment?

Husband: To write about something that interested you.

Enough said.

The Proper Role of Religion in Politics

As I belatedly update my blog, I want to link to an op-ed Charles Krauthammer wrote a month ago that I found refreshingly nuanced and sensible. To give you just a taste:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

The article reminded me of a speech I read several years ago in Mario Cuomo's collected speeches. (Yes, I know, Krauthammer and Cuomo are an unlikely combination.) In a speech that Coumo gave at Notre Dame while governor of New York, he argued that his Catholicism informs some of his political stances, but that he should only pursue those religiously-inspired policies that are suitable for his diverse constituency. In other words, his Catholicism can inspire his advocacy for a social safety net, but he would not support any policy that imposes the Catholic church's teaching on contraception on his diverse constituency of Sikhs, Protestants, Jews, and non-religious.

I found Cuomo's speech to be a persuasive explanation of how one's public service and private faith coexist--one that speaks to me as a politically literate Jew-- and Krauthammer's op-ed to be a refreshing defense of the separation between church and state.

Ken Burn's Civil War

Just the other day I finished watching the last episode of Ken Burn's Civil War documentary. I have never seen anything so perfect.

I never would have thought that I would enjoy a 12-hour documentary series about the war. I figured that such things were for tobacco-stained gray-hairs who read spend their summers traipsing battlefields, who read schmaltzy novels about the war, and collect anecdotes about Lee. Rather, I found it to be a really moving film that addressed the root causes, strategy, and tactics of the war and its human cost and meaning.

Certain parts in which leaders stood out for moral vision and moderate temper struck me as the best of Americanness.

Take for instance Lincoln's second inaugural speech, with its declaration that

Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'

Or General Grant's statement to his men after Lee's surrender that the rebels are now their countrymen. He then made a peace offering of rations to the starving Confederate soldiers.

Sherman said of Lincoln, "Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

I should hope we elect a leader in 2008 with even a distant reflection of the humane feeling and vision of these men.