Return The Armistice

Third Ypres, 1917

"It's all over, an armistice has been signed," a company sergeant in the British 8th Division announced to his men (their commanding officer had been wounded in the head the night before). "What's an armistice, mate?" asked one of the men. "Time to bury the dead," replied another.

--Martin Gilbert, The First World War

IN the last days, before the end, the fittingly contrived, artificial, autocratically-choreographed end of a war which kept men killing each other right up to the pealing of church bells, just as they'd been killing each other with unspeakable barbarity for more than four years  over an incident which was resolved before the shooting began, the German monarchy had been reduced to pleading with the French to cease fire--without surrender, without treaty, as gentlemen--so that the Kaiser could turn his troops onto his own people and prevent a second Bolshevik revolution. Foch turned it down.

In early October Prince Max of Baden, the new Chancellor and a well-known proponent of negotiated peace, forced Hindenberg to admit--in writing--that there was no hope of the German army forcing a peace on its enemies. Two weeks later Ludendorff would simply decide to ignore the Chancellor, and the Army High Command would attempt to supress the Proclamation of acceptance of Wilson's Fourteen Points (which it was hoped would make peace acceptable enough to the Allies that Germany could keep the Alsace and Poland, by the way). Men continued to die.

It took considerable doing to convince Kaiser WIllhem II that his Army and Navy were no longer loyal, and he would not be leading them back to teach a lesson to his ingrate subjects who were refusing to starve to death quietly any longer. He then rejected the idea that he go seek death in the trenches as unseemly for the Head of the Lutheran Church. Sic semper! He had to travel to his exile in Holland down back roads. He lived long enough for Hitler to send an honor guard to his funeral.

It's fitting that the former Decoration Day, now Memorial Day, has expanded to honor the ever-growing number of dead of our ever-growing number of wars since The Late Unpleasantness. It's a continuing stain that we have overwritten the file on Armistice Day, and rebranded as a general celebration of all things unquestioningly militaristic the day which, of all days, should remind us of the enormity of war, of its stupid brutality and ultimate futility, the hollow rituals of its fictive glories, the honor and sense of duty of the men and women who go off to fight and bleed and kill and die time and again, for the gratification, and the profit, of leaders who have no honor. Let the dead bury their own dead. Let the banks and post offices close to honor our military veterans during some warmer, more enjoyable, verdant picnic of a month. Take the Federal holiday with it, if necessary, and return the Armistice to solemnity, and silence, and the hope that some future generation will prove capable of learning from it, unlike the ones before.

Dear Heather,

Heather Havrilesky, "An open apology to Boomers everywhere". November 7

I WAS pacing the house Saturday morning, trying to get my knees and back to achieve the same semi-alert status as the rest of me, and my Poor Wife had one of those morning "news" shows on, and Sarah Palin Fights Back stopped me dead in my tracks. I was sorta kinda vaguely aware of the supposed explosion over the supposedly shocking revelations that Palin was even dumber than she sounded; I was also aware those had turned up after the election, on FAUX, so 1) how'm I supposed to hear it, and 2) who gives a fuck, anyway? But the story, and the title graphic--with Palin it really should be "Former Beauty Queen Uncorks Pop Gun" shouldn't it? She doesn't really "fight back" so much as whine about the unfairness of being found out--led me to the internets for more of the story.

Which wound up reminding me of that Zen saying from somewhere: Before I was enlightened trees were just trees and mountains were just mountains. Now that I am enlightened trees are just trees and mountains are just mountains. And Sarah Palin is still who gives a fuck, only more so. She, or the Malkinseses, are free to combat the infamies the Councilwoman has suffered at the hands of disgruntled McCain staffers, but they might want to consider what Sun Tzu said on offensive strategy: "Before engaging the enemy, it is of vital importance to make sure you have a fucking weapon first."

The one thing I thought was interesting were the reports that the Palin's raid on Neiman-Marcus had included somewhere between $20-40K spent spiffing up Todd Palin. Again, I don't mean "interesting" in the sense of "revealing something new or unexpected about that group of traveling swindlers John McCain tried to put a heartbeat away from The Button", but, rather, "interesting" because I'd spent part of the run-up to Election Day reading The XX Factor, where Palin's shopping spree was partly ameliorated, to certain ways of thinking, by blegging a possible cost of Joe Biden's suits [Caution: Meghan O'Rourke link]. The average estimate ("most of you.." sez Meghan) came in at $1000, with a caution that it "could easily" have risen to five times that. (One could, of course, have simply gone to the Brooks Brothers site, say, or picked up a phone, but it's so much more accurate when you collect multiple data points.)

I suppose we will not be hearing anyone point out at The XX Factor that for that amount of jack Mr. Councilwoman Palin could have hauled in twelve Brooks Brothers suits and had enough left over for seven pairs of alligator shoes, sufficient silk shirts, ties, socks, and undies, Gore-Tex™ bags to stuff the loot in, and perhaps a silver shovel to bury it all with before the auditors show up, unless they figure out a way to compare that with what Joe Biden is now likely to cost in Secret Service protection. The point isn't that these phony Tundra Populist dumbasses behaved as if they'd just hit the Lotto; the point is that people leapt to the first dumbass defense of the completely indefensible that came into their heads.

(At any rate, if there's someone out there who really believes that Palin & Brood didn't have every intention of cashing in on this stuff, before they noticed they were on videotape, I've got an Abner Doubleday autographed baseball for sale.)

Bonus Meghanism (as always, if you experience dizziness, light-headedness, vertigo, or an overwhelming urge to kill the next person you see, do not contact your doctor; it's only natural) from her election night in Grant Park:

Spontaneous cheers broke out ever few minutes, whenever an El train went by, with the energetic unity Whitman described in his healing paean to democracy, Song of Myself, a poem written at a moment of cultural divisiveness rivaling the one we just lived through.

That was only partly sadistic on our part; we think it's also necessary to get a grasp on just how poorly people understand their own history (in no small measure as the result of how watery the watercolor version painted for them in high school truly is; that's not a fucking excuse! by the way, unless your line is plumbing or dance remixes). In this we found an unexpected ally over the weekend in Ms Havrilesky, who is generally seen telling Salon readers what teevee shows they Just Can't Miss this week (which may, in fact, be the reason she's so refreshingly honest about the whole thing):

Dear boomers: We're sorry for rolling our eyes at you all these years. We apologize for scoffing at your earnestness, your lack of self-deprecation, your tendency to take yourselves a little too seriously. We can go ahead and admit now that we grew tired of hearing about the '60s and the peace movement, as if you had to live through those times to understand anything at all. It's true, we didn't completely partake of your idealism and your notions about community. Frankly, it looked gray and saggy in your hands, these many decades later. Chanting "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" at that rally against the Iraq war made us feel self-conscious in spite of ourselves. We felt like clichés. We wondered why someone couldn't come up with a newer, catchier, pro-peace slogan over the course of 40 years of protests. We knew we shouldn't care that some of you were wearing socks with sandals and smelled like you'd been on the bus with Wavy Gravy for the last three decades, but we cared anyway. We couldn't help it. It's just who we are.

Mind you, I didn't say I was relieved to finally locate some historical accuracy; I'm just glad we could finally get down to the Wavy Gravy business. I have no idea what Mr. Gravy, or his bus, smells like. Skunk weed? B.O.? Patchouli? My guess would be "Herbal Shampoo", but I really don't know. I have a dear friend who's a sort of surviving hippie, but if she ever wore tie-dye she gave it up long before I met her. She runs a sort of salon herself, and her habitués mostly smell like perfumed soaps or moderately-priced fragrances conservatively applied. Occasionally somebody smells like grocery-store incense. (Mr. Gravy, by the way, born Hugh Romney, is a decade older than the oldest of Boomers.)

And look, we really did stand for something, underneath all the eye-rolling. We're feminists, we care about the environment, we want to improve race relations, we volunteer. We're just low-key about it. We never wanted to do it the way you did it: So unselfconscious, so optimistic, guilelessly throwing yourself behind Team Liberal. We didn't get that. We aren't joiners. We don't like carrying signs. We tend to disagree, if only on principle.

You know what would make this a little more compelling? An element of truth.

Okay, so I don't doubt that "Gen X" is basically liberally-minded. This entire blog was dedicated to the proposition that even Indiana is basically liberal-minded.

So no real points for that. And where's the rest of this shit come from? You'd think that in 1700 words dedicated to explaining that You didn't really know what You were talking about (before the scale fell from Your eyes last Tuesday night) it might have occurred to you to wonder about that. Unself-conscious? Optimistic? Lacking in self-deprecation? Fuck, lady, let me introduce you to the Firesign Theatre, the National Lampoon (back when that was a brand name for humor), and the Punk movement. Have a listen to "W.C. Fields Forever" and "Le Trente-Huit Cunegonde" from Firesign's first (1968) album, and then point me to something contemporary which is half so self-effacing. There was less cultural Balkanization in them days, perhaps--though this, too, did not begin when you started looking around--but there was certainly a more robust public argument about consequences.  By the time I got to college, in the early 70s, "counterculture" was pretty much reduced to a sick joke. Just like it is with you, but told by people who knew what they were talking about.

But how could we have known? We were raised under Ronald Reagan, smiling emptily under a shellacked cap of shiny brown hair like a demon clown, warning us (With a knowing nod! With a wink!) about those evil Russians stockpiling nuclear arms thousands of miles away. We were raised by "The Love Boat" and "Eight Is Enough" and "Charlie's Angels," a steady flow of saccharine tales with clunky morals. There were smiling families, hugging and learning important lessons on every channel, while at home, our parents threw dishes at each other's heads. We went to church and learned about God's divine plan every Sunday, but all it took was one Dr. Seuss cartoon about an entire world that existed on a speck of dust, and our belief in God was deconstructed in an instant. Our childhoods were one long existential crisis. We ate Happy Meals while watching the space shuttle blow into tiny bits.

What? That's the goddam bio, mutatis mutandis, of every fucking Boomer in the country.

The difference, perhaps, is that some of us stopped getting our moral lessons from teevee once we reached adulthood. And some of us joined our elders (the oldest Boomers were twenty-three when the Sixties ended, Heather) in opposing institutionalized racism and immoral international adventurism. I am, truly, sorry that this had the effect of reducing social activism to an of out of fashion brand of pants and the aroma of an old man on a bus, but, y'know, I consider that your fucking problem. I'm sorry you had to grow up with Reagan; I'm sorry the opposition party has done nothing to counteract that. But I grew up with the Johnson and Nixon administrations lying to me on a daily basis, and I got over it even before they were done.

And here's the thing: I don't apologize for taking the Civil Rights Movement seriously (and I certainly don't apologize for recognizing its correct time frame). I don't apologize for believing that a proper understanding of US involvement in Indochina is as important today as it was at the time, especially since there's been a concerted effort on the part of the people responsible, and their political descendants, to obfuscate that history and their own guilt. It's not a "generational" thing. It's just as important that people understand the First World War, the Quasi War, and the Whiskey Rebellion. Proper historical perspective on Vietnam would have prevented Iraq, in the same way that military conscription would have turned all of you into a bunch of dirty hippies. 

Hey, "my" generation is "responsible" for Yuppie-ism, Disco, and the career of George Lucas. But to suggest, in damn-near the same breath, that "we" are responsible for Ronald Reagan and taking all the fun out of war protesting for you is just silly. What you know, what you don't know, what you imagine you learned by staring into Barack Obama's eyes on your plasma teevee, means fuck-all as far as I'm concerned. We're all in this together, for good or ill; like all men, we've been given bad times in which to live (though the 1850s were almost as divisive, but with better poetry). It's not productive to keep taking offense at this sort of shit, so I won't; I just wish you--low-key feminist, low-key environmentalist, high-profile teevee pundit--would stop for a second and ask just what path you'd have taken back a brief generation ago, when such matters were pure anathema to the ruling classes, when you risked ostracism, and jail time, instead of a reduction to niche marketing.  Enjoy the next two months.  After that decisions get made.  After that you can't blame the bogey-man, or the boogie-rocker, any more.  

Another Mulligan

"This nation has such elasticity, flexibility...you know, people you talk to abroad can't believe that the country that elected George Bush eight years ago has...shifted and is now electing Barack Obama, and they ask wh...what..how can...wh...how can you do that? And it's because we have an amazing ability in this country to learn, to change, and to give opportunity...and...um, and I think that that's what's going on here. We've already changed a lot and I think this is realy gonna make change come a lot faster in this country now. It's gonna speed it up."

--Gloria Borger, part of CNN's "best political team on television", election night

I'M not a world traveler, but I suspect that this is perhaps the one thing which most distinguishes Americans, apart from daily caloric intake: that we're the only people on earth whose political pundits could take a comment which obviously, and quite sensibly, questions the mass sanity of a country which could elect an inexcusable dipshit like George W. Bush, twice, and turn it into--all at the same time: 1) a compliment on our political perspicacity and capacity for "growth"; 2) a suggestion that our belated recognition of a total fucking disaster which was clear enough to the rest of the world four years ago, when it could have been eradicated by direct action, is a sign of some sort of unique political self-awareness; and 3) that the rest of the world is somehow astonished by the breadth of political expression in the Western democracy which is, or was, the most politically homogenous, excepting for the way the right end of its spectrum keeps falling off the table.  Because, y'know, no one could possibly conceive of the French, or the Canadians, or the French-Canadians, electing a conservative or anything. 

You may have heard that Slate, recent recipient of a layout rhinoplasty and, quite possibly, a bit o' the old lipo to that unsightly double-reverse-inside-out-contrarian-non-contrarianism--there's some unsightly bruising which we'd call tell-tale except that there's always some unsightly bruising at Slate, just like that wire basket on the kitchen counter where my Poor Wife puts fruit she then forgets about--has hosted this week a sort of Wither 'Conservatism'? seminar featuring the sort of back-bench you might be surprised to learn a decimated party would have left. Included are two--Christie Todd Whitman and Ross Douthat--who're already seasoned veterans at the How My Party Can Become More Like Me and Earn Fabulous Constituencies game, and one--Pepperdine Law Professor Douglas Kmiec--who was an announced Obama man. Slate also managed to land--talk about your journalistic coup!--Tucker Carlson, who apparently managed to find some free time somewhere, perhaps by reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Who Used To Have Careers or something. Tucker, the boilerplate at the bottom informs us, is now a commentator for Tina Brown's The Daily Beast, which all the kids are talking about. Talk about someone who's got to be brimming with advice on reanimating your flagging fortunes! And there's Jim Manzi, a member of that most favored of Republican clans, the Entrepreneurs, or, to put it another way, a guy who became CEO of a thriving company and managed to maneuver it into being taken over by a more successful company. Although in this case (Lotus) it also includes Previously Allowing Microsoft To Take Over The Market With A Tenth-Rate Copy of Your Product. I'm really not sure how Manzi has avoided being tapped to run Indiana's BMW at this point. He's identified as being a contributing editor of the National Review, meaning we still don't know just how many teats a sow can have.

Hopeful free-speech martyr Kathleen Parker is supposed to be joining the happy throng, but hasn't been spotted as of 7AM Friday.

Leave us remember, now, that these people represent, not just a party, and an ideology, which just this week was repudiated at the polls for a second consecutive election cycle, but one which has watched its entire stable of stalking horses (Defense, Economy, Competence, Morality, and Philosophical Purity) get chopped up, ground twice, canned and sold as dog food, and then learned it even makes dogs sick. Because you're not gonna be reminded of this by that panel as they swap recipes for horse chitterlings.

Maybe we should just run it down in order:

• Manzi: Create competition in education! Reconsider immigration!

• Kmiec: Vouchers! Tricky Rewording of Roe! Get Out of Iraq! Civil Rights!

[Yes, Get Out of Iraq! an idea so brilliant you have to wonder why no one thought of it before. By the way, for daring to suggest that the Party legislate that Life begins at conception but requires a "supermajority" to "defend" from "murder"--thereby graciously offering a face-saving compromise to the majority of Americans, who don't believe it, and have just return responsibility for creating legislation to people who don't, either--Kmiec is immediately taken out back and strung up with one of Todd Palin's returned neckties.]

• Douthat: Disentangle my own sensible desire to enact Federal Ovary Control legislation from the crackpot extremist stuff most Americans don't want.

• Whitman: We must find a way to promote principles of sound government which recognize that government can be a positive force for good in people's lives, while at the same time ensuring it never acts on any such ideas. Oh, and keep our winning coalition together!

• Carlson: There has to be something out there that can inspire irrational panic again. Think!

That's it. Really, that's it. After that they commence to fightin' over who's willing to compromise on abortion the least. Oh, an' how massive spending on defense contractors isn't a form of redistributing wealth, 'cause we get so much return there for other people's money. Like the ability to claim Ronald Reagan wiped out Communism.

[UPDATE: Parker appears, says that the high-minded ideals which put Reagan in office have been betrayed by promoting a high-profile, low-IQ, intellectually-incurious, telegenic ideological mouthpiece like Sarah Palin. And can't we find a way to keep that guy with the Obama Monkey Puppet out of camera range?]

Along the way, Whitman comforts the group--she's later seconded by Parker--with the notion that while Obama won big, a lot of his supporters don't really like him. "This is still a centrist country" sez Kathleen, before recommending a good healthy dose of the Olde Time Centrism of Reagan and Bill Fuhbuckley. It serves to remind us that at least one Obama voter--the one in their midst--appears to have been hallucinating some quid pro quo from the Democrats, abandoning base and principles to assuage the hurt feelings of educated 21st century elites trapped by 12th century theology who've seen their devotion to a single "moral" issue damn near crumble everything good about the country. And he's the sensible one.

Mulligan

THE Narrative is a palimpsest; as of Tuesday night the Obama campaign is a roaring success, and McCain's is a failure, or, more frequently, he never had a chance, being saddled with Bush'n'all. Of course this is called into question somewhat by the fact that the Acting President was barely mentioned from January on, so much so that when Bob Schieffer brought his "remarkable absence" up last week my Poor Wife and I looked at each other, amazed to find someone at CBS News still remembered the man's name when they weren't covering one of the sorry little Autumnal photo ops he's been reduced to. Compare Al Gore's rejection of Clinton's aid in 2000, a major story the whole campaign long. (Here, for example, is Time in Springtime, congratulating the Vice President on finding ten feet of usable pole with which to distance himself from a President who was leaving office more popular than Ronald Reagan. And yes, the "John F. Dickerson" is the same John Dickerson who, as Slate's chief political correspondent, was last seen offering Barack Obama tips on how to have a successful Presidency. I haven't gotten around to numbering my own list yet, but it is looking as if "Don't take advice from journalists Ari Fleischer considered good bets to stovepipe the Joe Wilson story" will make the cut.)

On the other hand, yesterday's overwritten file is tomorrow's brilliant flash of originality, and I'm not ready to trash anything I said about the Obama campaign just because it all proved completely erroneous. "Find charismatic candidate/ run against most unpopular office holder since the invention of Zero/ hope opponent nominates backwoods religious nut who spends at least six months of every year in total darkness as running mate" is certainly a winning formula; it's just mighty tough to duplicate. Progressive Blogtopia still seems to think it's won an election on the merit of its positions, without asking how many of 'em the President-elect actually shares.

(It's the same with the Creeping Towards Cloture Watch on the Senate, as though sixty Democrats meant a Liberal Supermajority, as though these weren't the very same people and the very same party that coughed up 17 votes--1/3 of its number--to immunize telecoms for spying for the Bush administration. And not, we remind you, at the height of the Terra craze, but four friggin' months ago.)

But I digress. It's interesting that "Bush's historically unimaginable approval numbers" hamstrung the McCain campaign, but the much-ballyhooed historically low approval of Congress did not much affect, well, Congress, the actual people whose numbers those were. Bush's numbers tended to camouflage the serious disarray of the Republican Brand generally, and McCain had no problem running to that, early and often.

And why shouldn't he've? Bush won in 2004 because Republicans turned out in record numbers to salvage his, and their, legacy, or "legacy" (which was, at the time, attributed against all evidence to "Values" Voters, you'll recall). It looked for all the world as if all a Republican candidate ever had to do was Just Add Ohio to the ready-made near electoral lock. If the one truly dishonest, out-of-character thing John McCain did in order to get elected was to publicly embrace George Bush in 2004, well, it seemed like the smart move in Republican politics at the time.

Don't we get a whole lot closer to the bone if we consider that McCain's real problem in 2008 was that he came pretty close to revealing the real John McCain, as well as the real Republican electoral majority, 1980-2004? The McCain campaign, v. 2.0, was practically a carbon copy of the Lee Atwater campaign of '88, with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers as The Incredible Two-Headed Willie Horton, the same charges of anti-capitalism and insufficient patriotism, and Sarah Palin in the place of Dan Quayle.  I don't recall anyone at the time cautioning that the party was running too far from St. Ronnie. If we're personally too jaded to imagine sea change is accomplished by an election (in large part because we remember how furious the scripting required to make 1980 appear that way), let us also recognize that McCain's loss was, really, truly, a Republican loss, a long-overdue correction to the Southern Strategy, and that the Senator from Arizona needed to run so far from Bush as to be outside the stadium, the party, and maybe the country before that would have begun to have an effect.

The "reinvention" of Republicanism will now struggle under the twin weights of decades of the denial of reality, and the constant eye on its every move, unlike the backroom deal that brought us George W. Bush in 1999. The glorious confluence of Robber Baronage, Ozzie and Harriet Provincialism, and Permanent Warfare has passed its sell-by date; leave us not imagine that's all George Bush's fault.

Dewy Defeats Grumpy

OKAY. I have no call to gloat, m'self, but it's nice to see people I admire being able to do so, or just bust out bawling. It beats the alternative. And even though the teevee blatherfesters didn't mention it one single time, the historic import of one Jimbo Riley finally casting a vote for President which counted, in only his tenth fucking attempt, has not been lost on everyone, mostly me.

Can we have direct election of the President now? After a decade of screwed-up elections, can we acknowledge we're no longer thirteen coastal communities trying to hoodwink each other into agreeing to the amount of federal control we imagine is best for us personally? Even if that is what we still are, minus the coastal bit? Interest in voting is at a post-war high, even if that's not exactly an impossibly high standard or anything; time to use that to overhaul the system.

This would, of course, have the attendant benefit of eliminating all the fucking Red State/Blue State crap, and none of us would have to look at the Great Red Wall of the Trans-Mississippi ever again. For one thing, if you take out all the major cities of the Republic of Texas, how many people live between there and Canada? Several hundred? I would also like to suggest that if your state is responsible for both the political career of the Worst President Ever Imaginable and his phony fucking hick accent, you should recuse yourself from national elections for a decent interval, say, until he dies.

Now then--and I think regular readers may have expected a now then--I resisted turning on the teevee or checking results until the polls closed here (truth to tell, I was busy not splashing muriatic acid on myself), and the first thing I hear is "Well, for once we can't call Indiana the minute the polls closed," which may in fact have been news to that .0001% of the audience which was just waking up from a coma, but simply announced to the rest of us that we could go ahead and buckle in for a night of empty platitudes and witless observations, which was not exactly an historical first. And the second thing I heard was one of the local "political" "reporters" asking the designated Democratic spokesman why Jill Long Thompson had tanked.

Jill Long Thompson was the semi-lifelike Democratic candidate for Governor. Meaning by 6PM she'd already lost to Mitch "Courage" Daniels. And the son of a bitch wound up with almost 60% of the vote.

Okay, so say what you will about Hoosiers; we're not exactly bright. And you can throw in the effects of money on politics: Daniels' war chest, curiously, was almost exactly the Clinton surplus plus the first two years of Bush deficits (when Mitch ran the OMB) combined. He's been running campaign ads continuously since April, 2005. He's an arrogant, snotty little career bureaucrat who little over a year ago was struggling to reach 45% approval, and he gets sixty fucking percent of the vote. (Trust me, the intersection of Arrogant and Snotty is not exactly a popular spot in Indiana.)

And he gets 60% of the vote and at his victory celebration announces a "sale" on the Ditch Mitch bumperstickers the clear-eyed and public-minded among our denizens have been sporting since the middle of 2004. Charming. Always nice to see an elected official demonstrating that it's all about the self-aggrandizement. (This was an interesting step back into character for Mitch, who, having always been a supernumerary before becoming governor, has had to learn politics--and the art of keeping his nasty little overcompensatory thoughts to himself--on the fly. In 2004 it was "my opponents are idiots"; by 2008 it was "oh, we've made a few mistakes along the way, sure", a statement I imagine they had to have dubbed into the ads after he choked every time he tried to read it. Daniels is such a Little Napoleon, marrow-deep, that they've taken to having him say nothing whatsoever during legislative sessions, since every time he opens his mouth he loses another two or three votes by offense.)

(And by the way, if you think this is just me mouthin' off, consider that the man is almost the singular example of Red State success in this Blue Year.  Coming soon to a Presidential primary near you.)

Every Indiana representative was re-elected by a wide margin, meaning we still send 5 Democrats to 4 Republicans to the House, but two of those Dems are Bluedogs, and all of the Republicans are Dan Burton. I'm still represented by an African-American and practicing Muslim. Stop trying to cheer me up.

None of this can be blamed on the Obama campaign, which--whatever else was wrong with it--fought for Indiana after thirty years of Democrats treating it as if the state line were marked in cobalt. They played electoral politics all the way, and in the end they were justified, once the economy collapsed on John McCain's head. Still, I remind you, nearly 56 million of your fellow citizens voted for McCain, and a sizable number of them were actually more excited about the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming Vice-President.

Not to harsh anyone's buzz, or worsen any hangovers; what else happens in the next four years, last night every American had the opportunity, just after the polls closed in the West, to see Bill Bennett look seasick on teevee. It's a memory I'll cherish forever.

Fear Death By Blather

David Brooks, "A Date With Scarcity". November 3

I WAS pretty much minding my own business this AM. I'm a seasoned charlatan. I have no need to get all excited about an election twelve hours before the returns start coming in. Truth be told, you can wake me when the election, not the balloting, shows some results, but that's just me. If most people didn't enjoy spectacles we'd be subjected to thirty minutes of news every night, and no one wants that.

I clicked on the Times, and--it's one of the dangers of the middle-aged brain, to which we will be returning--the autopilot took over, and the next thing I knew I was reading David Brooks. And Brooks has decided--the word may give false credit for what was actually an acute spasm or a dancing tic--that our poise at the edge of momentous electoral change was a fine excuse for him to reveal damn near everything pathetic and regrettable about the inside of his own skull.

In the past two decades, the United States has become a much more interesting place. Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life. Private citizens, especially young people, repaired the social fabric, dedicated themselves to community service and lowered drug addiction and teenage pregnancy.

This is The New York Times, fer chrissakes. Do you know anybody who thinks like this? Have a relative, a neighbor, a co-worker who believes Microfuckingsoft has "enlivened" his life (in that very special way that only Mass Marketers Of Other People's Better Ideas can do) ? Do you know anyone who would actually talk like this, unless he'd scored a luncheon speaking gig with the Greater Ottumwa Jaycees and really, I mean really, enjoys chicken à la king?

I'm pretty sure I've never made this explicit, but aside from the fact that The Newspaper of Record decided one day to recruit an "entrepreneur" for the Right-wing kiosk it set up as a replacement for the brick, mortar, and sacks of shit edifice that was Bill Safir(e), and somehow came up with David Brooks, there are essentially two interesting things about the man. The first is that adolescent Reaganaut vibe he shares with, among others, Jonah Goldberg and Professor Reynolds, the result of their having been convinced that Privilege, Self-Absorption, and a Fondness for Mass-Produced Mayonnaise is what made America great, and what would, eventually, see to it that those pot-smoking hippies who laughed at their cool robot sketches would Get What Was Coming To 'Em. The combination of this attitude with their passing into the vortex of Middle Age has not been at all pretty. They're trapped.  It's as if Sonny Bono had been forced to wear that vest the rest of his performing life. The second is Brook's ability to craft an I'm George Will, Too, Only Updated persona, which trades on a certain, oh, lack of physicality, that Mater Wouldn't Allow Me To Hurly-Burly With The Other Lads, But I'm The Superior Intellect For It routine which has been conveniently, but wrongly, construed as Gentlemanliness. Like Will, this has allowed Brooks to fling feces for decades while being presented on national teevee and in the nation's premier despoilers of timberland as respected. It's interesting that both became Affirmative Action Nerd hires in the mass-market media (Will to ABC via Newsweek, Brooks to NPR and the Gray Lady); it's interesting that with each progressively fuzzier Xerox of William FuhBuckley the clothing gets better. Marginally.

Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once.

Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968. For the past 16 years, baby boomers, who were formed by the tumult of the 1960s, occupied the White House. By Tuesday night, if the polls are to be believed, a member of a new generation will become president-elect.

Jesus Christ, could the Times at least require its sparkling little band of hallucinatory columnists to show their work, or at least just point at the Cloud Pony that gave them the idea? First, for the record, the "Long Boom" of 1983 was interrupted, some of us are not allergic to recalling, by The Worst Recession in Post-War History, and has been booming along since Bush took office only if you think charts and pie graphs are more important than what happens to actual Americans. Second, in contemporary usage "Baby Boomer" is generally considered to refer to those born between 1946 and 1964. Meaning it would include Barack Obama, and, for that matter, David Brooks. I don't care if you want to tinker with the numbers; just fucking spit it out, or quit using that insulting Boomer stereotype shit whenever you imagine it benefits you in some way. I was born at the tail end of 1953, roughly 35% of the way into the Boom. I'm closer in age to Barack Obama than to George W. Bush. I'm closer to Bill Clinton by two months.

Barack Obama is a child of the 1960s. His mother was born only five years earlier than Hillary Clinton. For people in Obama’s generation, the great disruption had already occurred by the time they hit adulthood. Theirs is a generation of consolidation and neo-traditionalism — a generation of sunscreen and bicycle helmets, more anxious about parenthood than anything else.

Yeah, Hillary Clinton totally could have given birth to Barack Obama, if she'd gotten pregnant two months after her thirteenth birthday. That's an age bracket where "only five years" makes a huge different, Mr. Brooks. As in "jail time".

Lemme say this, Dave. This number fixation is a sign of old age; learn to fight it. It's a fine divertimento, but a horrible ring opera. Barack Obama was six years old when Martin Luther King was shot. I was six when John Kennedy was driven down 16th Street in Speedway, Indiana, (in an open-top convertible) and I remember it pretty well. Obama was in his early teens when the United States exited Vietnam and Nixon exited the Presidency. He may or may not have been interested then, but it's not as if those are events he should be unable to place in historical context now. Just because your own early adulthood coincided with the political ascendency of Ronald Reagan, and just because you decided, or were hoodwinked into believing, that this Saved the Republic from the Great Disruption does not make it everyone's political biography. I have certainly got my differences with the way Obama has presented the history of this era during his campaign (i.e. as something of the politically-motivated hornswoggle your party presented in an effort to erase reality), but the idea that he grew up in some sort of safety-helmeted, mulatto-toleratin', GameBoy-playin' Consumer Paradise while the "real" Boomers were "consumed by culture war" or trying to figure out the clocks on their VCRs is just your Republican fantasy, Dave. Whatever else he's gotten wrong about the era of his childhood, I'm betting it doesn't include imagining that racial politics in this country is just something the Children of the Sixties dreamed up in order to have something to argue about.

Yet, at the same time, the public sphere has not flourished. Despite decades of affluence, longstanding issues like health care, education, energy and entitlement debt have not been adequately addressed. The baby boomers, who entered adulthood promising a lifetime of activism, have been a politically undistinguished generation. They produced two presidents, neither of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by the culture war that divided their generation. They pass their political supremacy today having squandered the fat years and the golden opportunities.

Okay. It's beyond me, purely and simply, to understand how or why this sort of thing continues unexamined among Brooks and his ilk. Now they decry the Culture War? It's what brought them to power, kept them in power, and what--when a quarter-century of lip service would no longer suffice to keep the religious wing placated--eventually fractured the party. Without a doubt there are culture war matters where I enjoy seeing the Right take jab after jab on the chin, but they're not generally matters of my own choosing; if the whackjobs the GOP aligned itself with with Nixon's Silent Majority Speech and Reagan's Kick-off Salute To Racial Terrorism had simply accepted the fact that the 20th century had arrived and left them in the dirt it could all have been avoided. I don't think many biologists relish spending time defending the principles of 19th century science to small-town school boards. If you'd just acknowledge that the Constitutional right to reproductive freedom was decided in 1973, and leave all further decisions in the hands of those directly involved, we could move on. Leave me alone while I'm watching porn, and I'll leave you alone while you're watching Rod Paisley. Then we can see who gets better ratings, if you like, just in case some daily lives need more enlivening than $6 cappuccino and $12 dish towels can provide. This culture war shit is your baggage, and you couldn't even eliminate it from your own party. And I notice a lot of it still going on forty years after the Great Disruptive Boomer Takeover. Must be a few youngsters opposed to gay marriage, huh?

Why does this continue? Money can't explain it; at this point Brooks could pretty much crank out scholarly monographs sliced into 800-word chunks and keep his paying gigs. Politics no longer explains it; his side's about to lose that one, too, and though it might effect a reversal at some point it'll have to be justified in some entirely different fashion. This leaves us, among the known human motivators for non-waterboarded proclamations of blatantly self-contradictory nonsense stubbornly clung to for decades with: a) Religion; b) Embarrassment; and c) Sex.

Own up, Mr. Brooks. We don't think you're all that religious.

Pass

"If Obama wins, he won’t have an ideological mandate. Reagan could blame his predecessor for most of the nation’s problems in 1981 far more legitimately than Obama will be able to in 2009, especially now that Iraq war has taken such a positive turn. "

--John H. Taylor, "Richard Nixon's chief of staff from 1984-90"

"SoHo is now a shopping centre. And so is Paris. You wouldn't go to Paris to learn anything about music or movies in the way I did. You'd go there to shop."

--Philip Glass

Bill Kristol, "I Am Marie of Roumania, Tra-la, Tra-lay". November 3

George Eff Will, "Manifold Historical Minutia Which Would Extenuate Obama's Ostensive Victory, Just As My Insouciant Bow-tie Has Mocked The Evanescent Gauds of Masculine Fashion Lo These Many Years". November 2

Glenn Greenwald, "God these people are dicks. Stupid dicks." November 2

TODAY'S quest began with a weekend comment (at Roy's ) from Susan of Texas, seconded by Michael Harrington, concerning mentioning the word "mandate" as frequently as physically possible over the next four years. Adds Mr. Herrington, "I remember 1984-86 and I'm ready for some motherfuckin' payback" [emphasis in original].  This, then, would be the second bit of proof that Mr. Herrington is not the same Michael Harrington whose appearances on Firing Line almost made up for William FuhBuckley: because the latter is dead, and because he'd remember the Same Mandate Shit, Different Election from 1980.

Along the way we found this from Kevin Drum, just in time to set a new personal standard for links in a single post, which suggested that the waxworks at ABC This Week predicted an Obama landslide, large-scale Democratic gains in both the House and the Senate, and a subsequent move to the right by both parties (Republicans, because that'll be all that's left, and Democrats, because the new seat gains will come from moderate and Republican areas).

So before we ask whether that's accurate, let's ask ourselves Who th' fuck are these people, and why do they define American politics for the teevee networks? Ever the optimist, I first tried to find the video while simultaneously avoiding ABC's web site. My quixotism was rewarded with a view of Last Week's panel: Will, Cokie, Sam, and Peggy Noonan. Aren't at least two of those people technically deceased? Can someone point me to the ABC news exec who thinks that panel offers something? Or who imagines that, with a bridge club like Will, Roberts, Donaldson, and Stephy on hand, there's anything which might possibly come out of Peggy's mouth, other than last night's Jack and Cokes, which isn't already covered?

This at least got me to run screaming to yesterday's video, and the comparative early peas of Will, Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, and Mark Halperin. Now first, before I forget it, Halperin, it wasn't Yogi Berra who said, "It's very difficult to predict. Especially the future." It was noted banjo-hitter and utility infielder Enrico Fermi. Yogi said, "You can observe a lot just by looking," which you might take into consideration, since, for one thing, he might not have to keep reminding people he didn't really say all the things he said.

Donna Brazile. Listen, fine, she's as entitled to moisten a seat at these snoozefests as anyone else, but that's the point. Have you ever heard a word come out of her mouth that would make a difference about anything? Another battle of the Fucking Former Strategists. Seismic. And balanced by Mark Halperin.

I know we've been over this before, but is there no way your panel could be made to resemble, even slightly, the electorate you're analyzing? Nobody's young, nobody's living paycheck-to-paycheck, nobody can even remember having done so, or ever spoken for people who do. Hell, in two weeks, with an ideological range running from mild and moderate Democrat (one) to High Church Royalist, you can't even find a Palin supporter. Two weeks, ten people, three females, one African-American, who is also one of the females--as the historic election of America's first black muslim syndicalist draws nigh!--while all the rest qualify as the natural constituency (but not the unpleasant backwoods snake-handling wing, oh no!) of the Wealthy White People's party. There's no room at the table for Joe Conason? None for Glenn Greenwald, who might dangerously remember "Dean" Broder opining, just a year ago, that Bush could be on his way back (and who might then recall the Dean was echoing...Mark Halperin)?

Anyway, anyone who's surprised to hear a flight of teevee pundits predict that the collapse of the most ideological right-wing administration in modern history, (taking much of the country along for the ride) would lead to both major parties moving rightward has simply not been paying attention.

As for the mandate stuff, well, I'm not only old enough to remember how it was tossed around in 1980--in precisely the way the GOP's Federalist forebears had used the Alien and Sedition Acts--I'm still just functional enough to recall the Bush camp using the term in December, '00, after losing the election.  Under the circumstances (that is, since words presently mean nothing whatsoever in politics), we shall see whether it's worth it to revive the argument to prop up the Democratic party (A Mandate for Moderation!). But then it's been clear for two years now that there's a mandate to replace the most incompetent and reviled administration in history, and that means eradicating anything remotely resembling its legacy. I know actual socialism as defined by actual people with actual undamaged thinking is out of the question, but how 'bout expanding the Court again? (If you made it thirteen that'd be one for each Circuit.) I suppose, also, that time will tell whether an overwhelming voter turnout, and participation via contributions and voluteerism, can be flushed down the toilet with impunity in 2009 the way the Democrats ignored the mandate to stop the war in 2007. It's not like I expect 'em to be asking that question on This Week or anything.

And the Trail of the Mandate took me to the Republican Mouthpiece response, where, with utter repudiation looming, the tactic of last resort is to dress the whole thing up in clown nose and rainbow wig. Kristol demonstrates, once again, that the competition for Most Hallucinatory Times Columnist is not quite the MoDo runaway it might appear:

Barack Obama will probably win the 2008 presidential election. If he does, we conservatives will greet the news with our usual resolute stoicism or cheerful fatalism.

And Will reassures us that the more Change changes, the more closely it resembles the doubletalk of the Golden Age of Reagan:

Coloradans and Nebraskans will vote Tuesday on measures to ban government-administered racial preferences in public employment, public education and public contracting. Voters have emphatically passed such measures in California (1996), Washington (1998) and Michigan (2006). If Colorado and Nebraska pass those measures, that will be evidence -- not counter to, but in addition to, the Obama candidacy -- that Americans are eager to put racial politics behind them.

Which reminds us: George Eff Will was an Affirmative Action hire for ABC in 1980. Aren't we overdue for a new one?

Punk Bonzai #16

UPDATE: So, I knew that earlier Punk Bonzai posts didn't have labels, since they pre-dated labeling in Blogger and I've been too lazy to go back and catch everything up, so I went to do that and discovered that earlier pics had been posted to my old host and weren't there anymore. And then I discovered they weren't on my present array of hard drives, either, which is somewhat surprising since I've kept every scrap of paper that's ever crossed my hands. They were on an old machine, so I dug 'em out, but by that time it seemed to make more sense to just repost 'em. 

Punk Bonzai #1: Meadow Sage (Dharma for Cows):



Notable as the first Punk Bonzai, for the absence of anything resembling a tree, and for the fact that my Poor Wife, thrilled at finding a bag of plastic cows, but somewhat disconcerted by the color combination of White and An Orange Not Found In Nature, Possibly Originating as One of Bill Gates' Shirt-Sock Combinations in High School, sanded and re-painted them all as Holsteins. 

Punk Bonzai #4: Last Prom (This Accident Could Have Been Prevented):

I never got the shot right; you can barely make out the driver on the hood, or his nearby date's skirt and matching shoes pointing upwards, and I think the paramedic is actually a milkman. My wife refuses to prune that oddball root thing. Pics of PB7: Funeral (Ode to Stephen Dowling Botts), which took advantage of a juniper that drowned and some HO scale earthmoving equipment, are missing and can't be recreated until I kill something else, and Indianapolis Power and Light remains a virtual work, since I can't bring myself to hack a V into an innocent tree just for a joke.

Joe The Stand-Up Comedian

Times:

“All right guys, I didn’t prepare anything,” Mr. Wurzelbacher said at a rally at the Washington Park gazebo in Sandusky. “The only thing I’ve been saying is just get out and get informed. I mean, really know what you’re talking about when you’re talking about it. Don’t take everyone’s opinions. I came to my own opinions by research. Get involved in the government. That way we can hold our politicians accountable and take back our government. It’s all ours.”

Can't compete. Have a good weekend.

Incuriouser and Incuriouser

In the mid-1940s, with budgets tight, the new head of production at Universal Studios decided to change its image towards more "prestige" films. To this end he revived a deal with the J. Arthur Rank Organisation--which had fallen apart just a couple years before when the films were poorly received--to import high-toned British productions.

At lunch one day a group of contract writers and producers were complaining about how their budgets were being cut while the studio spent money to import films such as The Tawny Pipit.

Nunnally Johnson told them they had it all wrong. "That picture's going to be a big money maker," he said. "Why, every lover of pipits in the country will be lined up to see it."

WHICH reminds me: Tina Brown has a new website. It's the one to which drifts of undecided voters flocked to find out who Chris Buckley was endorsing. Don't expect any linkage. I bring it up only because the gang at the XX Factor found an essay there by former Ms editor Elaine Lafferty claiming Sarah Palin is "very smart". Don't expect any linkage. (The egregious headline says "Brainiac", leading us to suspect that Brown's new Dog and Pony operation is so small she's doing all the editing herself. Both the sub-head and the body attempt to add heft by announcing Ms Lafferty's Democratic party affiliation, which suggests that some people operating Big Effing Deal Web Rollouts are actually not aware of all internet traditions. Her self-description comes right before she announces she's working with the McCain campaign, which, oddly, isn't supposed to affect the sort of person who might be persuaded by the piece.)

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

So by "smart" you don't mean what most of us think of when we hear the word--some big, strapping Buck who's overpaid and overpraised for his ability to catch a ball? Lemme just take a moment to get my head around that concept; "smart" and "dribbling" have always gone hand-in-hand for me. Okay. You mean she's "smart" like $100K worth of designer duds from Saks, right?

Okay, sorry. I know that was like shooting fish on bicycles in a barrel.

And this, in turn leads Meghan O'Rourke to grab the wrong end of the stick and start thrashing around her personal life for something to connect with (in fairness, this is apparently something which does not actually require a stimulus):

Does it matter whether Palin is a feminist or not? Isn't it possible that she could be a net benefit for feminism without being one? I, too, am bothered by Palin's politics on a number of women-related issues, from abortion to abstinence-only sex ed. But before I go to the "she's terrible for feminism" place, I think of two 9-year-old girls I know, and I try to see this from their perspective. This is the first election they're really going to remember. And what they'll remember is that Hillary Clinton very nearly was the Democratic presidential candidate and that Sarah Palin was a dynamic, funny, personable VP candidate.

Your lips to God's ears, Meghan. How well I remember my own youth, when Barry Goldwater (our only Jewish presidential candidate) tabbed William E. Miller (the only Catholic ever to run on a Republican national ticket) and the result taught me so much about tolerance.

Really. When you start saying things like "It could be a net plus for Feminism if the children of today were to grow up realizing that a powerful woman could enforce the Bronze Age moral codes that treat them as chattel" it's time to ask yourself: 1) how you got here and 2) how you get back out.

What had brought me to this magnetic storm of cerebral events was my search for the new script addition, the one which insists that Councilwoman Palin is, in fact, highly skilled, competent, and intelligent, despite all evidence to the contrary. This is not the Misunderestimation Ploy of the hardline Right, but, rather, a sort of public plea for mercy, a hesitation about piling on, from people who either have paid no attention to what's actually been coming out of her mouth, who have conveniently developed temporal global amnesia about the Bush administration and the Republican party generally, or who were smitten with her SNL appearance. O'Rourke obliges:

No doubt Palin is smart; but what troubles a lot of voters is whether she's intellectually curious and whether she's open to debate and advice.

I'm sorry, but when did intellectual curiosity become optional equipment? I don't expect it in That Bagger at Marsh, not because he's a bagger, but because he was obviously dropped on his head at an early age. He's not running for office, that I know of. "Intellectual curiosity" is not the same thing as being intellectual, or being an academic, or a pointy-headed elitist; it's the minimum requirement for acceptance into public discourse, among other things. I don't think anyone is asking Sarah Palin to descant on Proust. Sure, she's proven herself smart enough to be a sleezy politician, and to hold wingnut audiences in thrall--in much the same way that crowds at those Bob Hope USO shows thought Loni Anderson was a consummate entertainer--how is anyone supposed to evaluate those positions when she cannot defend holding them? That isn't a question of intellectual curiosity, it's a question of intellectual honesty.

Look, it may be that if one wants to continue as a well-paid editor for national publications one is required, at times, to pretend one knows, appreciates, and has a deep affection for, the sort of Middle American stereotype one uses as a replacement for ever having to dine with those people on their home Surf n Turf. Far smarter people than I subscribe to all of the World's religions; but that doesn't make someone who says Creationism should be taught in public schools smart. Whether it's St. Reagan, Bush the Dumber, or Sarah the Could-Be Feminist, it makes them, not intellectually incurious, but publicly stupid, either because they really are that stupid, or because they pretend to be as a vote-harvesting ploy. Which is worse? Why should we accept any excuses?

I'm sorry, but, we know, y'know? There's no great mystery as to why Sarah Palin has come across so poorly whenever she's not reading a script. She's not that bright. She may be able to work a crossword puzzle, she may be blessed with more native intelligence than average, she may be able to ace the job interview, before you look at her Wonderlic scores.  But she's not running for weekend sports anchor.  We watch her with Katie Couric and we know. People who have real lives deal with that sort of question practically every day, and if they can't tell chicken liver from chicken shit they either die when their Ford Aspire spontaneously combusts or are crushed to death under mounds of magazines they bought from itinerant subscription salesmen.  We know. Nabokov couldn't speak extemporaneously, either, and no one asks about his intellectual curiosity. The excuses come out when it's Reagan, or Bush, or someone we agree with politically or protect with faux balance. And look where that's gotten us.

Haven't We Been Over This Before?

Walter Shapiro, "How John McCain ran against himself". October 29

All that would have been required to achieve electoral parity and a plausible road map to the White House would have been for the Republican nominee to have transformed himself into ... (Warning: Mind-bending content ahead) ... the John McCain of the 2000 primaries.

WOW, thanks for the warning, Walter. For a minute there it was like I was on another one of those Maverick-induced Magic Carpet rides, and everything went all Lava-lampy an' stuff. If I hadn't been prepared my mind might'a bent and stayed like that.

Maverick! All I can figure at this point is that they had really, really good doughnuts on the Press bus in '00. Eight years later, and four years after McCain knelt and kissed George W.'s ring, ten months into a presidential campaign remarkable--even among presidential campaigns--for its intelligence-insulting, content-free, listless meanderings, John McCain can still evoke the same sort of pastel reveries as the first girl who let you reach under her sweater. Haven't we been over this before? McCain's "maverick" credentials comprise his support for campaign finance reform, or "reform", rather famously called into question in this very campaign, and his taking on ("taking on"), in 2000, the Falwells and Robertsons (here, also famously, his opposition vanished, this time even before the campaign had gotten underway).

Oh, and the Bush Tax Cuts, which he opposed before wanting to make permanent. What's interesting in all this is the degree to which a Press corps which was consumed by the question of Al Gore's cradle-fed presidential asperations, which mused aloud about whether Hillary Clinton--alone among the twenty-seven declared candidates--wasn't "too ambitious" for the Office, swallowed this stuff whole, without ever asking about context. John McCain, campaign finance reformer, was the same John McCain whose Senate career almost ended with Charles Keating's bankroll up his fundament just two years earlier; the Religious Right establishment--which was already sinking, only to be artificially buoyed by eight years of Bush--he "bucked" in 2000 was already in the bag for his opponent. (That IOU, you may recall, was settled when the administration signed over the pink slip to the Justice Department.) This is the same Republican party which was widely imagined to have Culturally goose-stepped itself out of an election at the '92 Convention, and it was the same Year 2000 where the country enjoyed a budget surplus due to the reversal of incontinent tax-cutting. It was also the Republican party which had failed to nominate an avowed "Movement" "Conservative" for two cycles, and where even the beholden dullard George W. was being presented as something else. Which makes those seem, at least, like they could have been carefully crafted positions dating to 1996. Not that I'm saying John McCain, vintage 2000, could not possibly have been the only politician in America whose positions were the result of personal principles, absent any and all electoral calculation. I'm just sayin' that if John McCain ever really was a true Maverick I'm glad he wasn't killed in the long fall off that pedestal.

While alternative history is inherently speculative,

Some say "masturbatory".

a reasonable case can be made that McCain could have won the 2008 Republican nomination even if he had not pandered to Falwell and had not abandoned his fiscal conservatism to compete with Romney on taxes. The victory formula would have been built around McCain's biography, his unorthodox style, his unstinting support for the surge in Iraq and the general feeling that eight years earlier the GOP made a tragic mistake with Bush. In short, McCain could have come out of the GOP primaries prepared to run against Obama as a true maverick rather than a generic Republican railing against socialism

Again, assuming that John McCain 2008 is a vote-pandering election whore, where McCain 2000 was a dewy bride unaware she was about to be ravaged by racist push-polling in South Carolina. We don't. In fact, we confess that to us no one who's remained a Republican over the past three decades has a right to wear virginal white and expect the rest of us to keep a straight face. (It's amusing to see Noonan and Brooks suddenly scruple at a Palin when they kept their party allegiance during and after Pat Buchanan's Convention speech in '92. He was a big audience pleaser, too.) 

Let's recall that in 2005, still warm from that embrace of Bush, McCain surveyed the field and saw...Rudy Guiliani, the Mad Marxist of the GOP. To McCain's right were Bill Frist, who was bound to blow away in the first stiff breeze, and Sam Brownbeck, a religious wingnut who, as it turned out, couldn't even get religious wingnuts to vote for him. McCain steered right. You may, if you wish, believe that it's the first time he'd ever touched a tiller in his life. We don't. We think the idea that there's a "real" John McCain out there who, had he but followed his instincts, would now prove to be Just the Maverick We Need is a bunch of inherent monkey-spanking. And our opinion is one thing; the reality of a modern political campaign, where the first order of business is fund raising, is that he was forced to "move" "right" or get steamrollered. Run against Bush? The only Republican doing that in 2008 was Ron "Crazy Guy with the Lawn Chair and the .50 Caliber Muzzleloader" Paul.

Never mind that any flailing campaign exiting October would have been improved had the campaigner been prescient about its central themes two years previous; McCain's a Republican, he's run as a Republican, and the Republicans of the Goldwater era have no answer to tough economic times, white collar criminality, or international crises that cannot be solved by carpet bombing. He was still ahead in some polls before corporate socialism hit the headlines and Sarah Palin hit the networks. Had he run as the imaginary Buck Stopin' Faux Populist, he'd now be watching Mitt Romney get his balls crushed.

Which brings up the one bit of "alternative history" we think would have vastly improved the McCain campaign. It's the one where someone says, "You'll be seventy-two fucking years old, John. Go live off your wife's money." And he takes the advice.

So, I See You're Voting For 'ChemLawn'

I WAS raking leaves this weekend, and my neighbor was obsessively vacuuming her lawn, as usual--that's not an exaggeration--and we made a little friendly chitter-chatter at the property line, as you will, which generally includes her expression of concern for my mother, and my reply that my own memory isn't exactly sparkling, which is not news to me, but is now somewhat disconcerting seeing as how it's held up against the cold light of serious mental deterioration on a regular basis. And she mentioned that she was approaching the big Five-Oh, and that she and her husband had both noted a disturbing decrease in memory-related mental acuity, to the extent that her husband was now taking...now taking...that...stuff...

And so the two of us spent the next three minutes trapped in a sort of half-tense/half hysterical pre-dotage before I came up with Gingko biloba! I have to admit I felt the glory of triumph. Stuff like that is just a mite too disturbing for real laughs, at least at the time (I knew recounting it would provoke a snort fest in my Poor Wife, which it did); it's like an uncomfortable joke, where the laughter is supposed to be a release, but where the set-up was so over-elaborated that by the end you just felt sorry for everyone involved.

The other Neighbor News was that their daughter, lately licensed to drive, had announced she was joining the Young Democrats. This is apparently one of those grand passages in life which are now accompanied by a tee-shirt, for which she was said to be impatiently waiting. And this means nothing whatsoever until you set it in relief against Dad's Reagan/Bush '84 poster in the garage--framed, it is--and the memory that their Bush/Cheney Double Aught yard sign stayed in place through that horrible autumn and right on through the inauguration. In point of fact I don't remember whether they eventually removed it or it got swept away by a snow plow.  Dad reportedly did not take the news too well.

For comparison's sake, the BushCheney'04 sign went up late and came down early, and this year, nothin'. We're blessed, actually, that this year the signage begins in the next block, or Little Appalachia, as we like to call it, and does not include any of the MITCH signs which are roughly three times the size of the actual governor. Ever the over-compensator. Anyway, the only bit of political theatre we have to view out the picture window every dawn is Old Glory across the street. This spring it went from fixed-staff parade-waver model stuck into a metal holder on a mailbox post, to a Woodstock-cape sized deal on a fifteen foot metal pole, and which, like its predecessor, flies day and night, rain or shine, no lights, no black ribbon compensating for the inability to lower it to half-staff. Nothin'. It never fails that the people most likely to fly the thing are the ones least likely to give a shit about etiquette and respect.

Which I guess is our theme for the day; I just saw an electoral map with Indiana glowing in some odd color. We're a Tossup State. This is treated, in some quarters, particularly the ones where all the barking seems to be coming from, as some sort of sea change--last night, by my unofficial tally, was Day 214 in the Nightly Local News Hairdos Remind Us How Long It's Been Since Indiana Voted Democratic Festival and, really, you try livin' through that and maintaining your sanity--when it should, in a normal world, be treated as an early warning to the other 47 to Just Fucking Run Like Hell. Forty years of voting Republican might seem to some people like a measure of how "Red" the state is, but, if I may but point out, it's actually a measure of how fucking stupid the voters around here are. I'm sorry, really; I'd love to sound all cheery and upbeat an' shit, and Lord knows there's nobody in the country more eager than I to see Republicans Bite It, Big, and Keep On Biting It Every Day, Forever, but I have to be honest. The only time in my lifetime people in Indiana voted for a President who did not immediately turn around and rain shit upon them, steadily, and almost gleefully, is when the guy they voted for lost. Indiana's practically the only Solid Red state in the nation that sends in more in Federal tax dollars than it gets back. It sends reliable pro-Pentagon votes to Congress every two years, and since Reagan took office has seen every single one of its military installations closed and votes in, time and again, the anti-unionists who've solved that little problem by helping ship all the manufacturing jobs out of the country. We're the friggin' Madden Curse of states; y'know, it's just 11 electoral votes or something--I've lost count, but it drops every Census--so assuming Senator Obama doesn't really need 'em I think he should just pass. Maybe make a gift of 'em to McCain, if it comes to that.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it could all be breaking the other way, in the direction of the Increasingly Erratic Express and his aggressively ignorant small-town lunatic of a running mate.

McCain's program, so far as I can tell, is to keep doing the one thing he managed to do well: rile up the base. I'm not sure how that's supposed to translate into more votes, but, hey, it's his campaign. Socialism! It's got that fine, creepy-guy-with-the-overgrown-hedges-and-the-curtains-always-drawn vibe, the guy these people decided, for reasons which are still unclear, was the Gravitational Center of American Political Discourse, after which they managed to go 6-4 in Presidential elections, which convinced them they'd stumbled on some sort of eternal verity.  And the thing that's really remarkable is that McCain spent twenty-five years in Washington, at least half of them as anathema to his own party, and he still had no idea what the base was, which sorta underlines the point that they've been taking them for granted for three decades. Surely somebody somewhere, knowing the sort of cash he had at his disposal, could have sat him down in 2005 and performed the tricky "scrolling" maneuver for him while making him read a page from Little Green Footballs. "Are you honestly cynical enough about America to imagine that if you're required to appeal to these people just to win the nomination you'll do so? And still pretend America is worth governing?" 

And the funny thing about that is, it's difficult to believe, watching Councilwoman Palin's case of premature Norma Desmonditis--swear to god, every half-witted "celebrity" in this country is now convinced the ideal career arc is 1) achieving 15 minutes of fame; 2) the last ten minutes, when everything you touch turns to shit; and 3) your reprise as Hogan Knows Best--that this is what McCain's primary supporters thought they were getting in a candidate. They had every opportunity to vote for Sarah Palin in the primaries, even if she did look like Fred Dumbo Thompson. Ed Rollins said, over the weekend, that Palin "would be the most popular Republican when this thing's over". Here's hopin', Ed. Here's hopin'.

Which brings us back, in an odd way, to the neighbors. He's not a Palin religious wacko; more like a Libruls Want To Take Away My Guns and Macho Bluster As a Substitute for Learning Anything About World Affairs guy. And the guns, so far as I know, are for duck hunting, which he doesn't do much of. I have no idea what he thinks of Palin; I don't discuss politics, religion, or popular movies in polite society. But he's got that same aggressive intellectual sloth that's so common among a generation (or more) of Americans who decided, or were taught, that if the facts were against them then there was something wrong with the facts. And his wife told me that, when their daughter announced her new party affiliation he made her call her (paternal) grandfather and tell him, on the grounds, I take it, that you had to go back at least a generation to find a wingnut with any experience in talking to someone he disagrees with.