joanie & me

A long long time ago, I talked to Joan Baez on the phone about how we were going to change the world.
I was in San Francisco pretending to be a hippie. She was at a party in New York that a high school buddy of mine was at, and he put Joan on the phone to tell me to come east and help change the world by making gritty documentary movies about all the bad things that were going on in the world.

Our conversation lasted less than fifteen seconds. I could tell she had no idea who I was or why she was talking to me. But it was still a neat moment, to be standing at the window of my apartment smoking a joint and shooting the shit with Joan Baez while across the street in the Panhandle Big Brother and the Holding Company were getting ready to sing and day-glo women twirled in lazy circles with their eyes closed. And I remember thinking how cool it was to almost be a grownup with the power to change the world, if only the world would listen to us.

As it turned out, I did end up going east -- where I sat around with my comrades getting stoned and plotting the revolution that would bring perpetual peace to the planet and food to the starving children. For reasons too numerous to go into here, my friends and I never quite got around to it. Instead of changing the world I got myself a job and a family and started thinking about how to change myself, which seemed slightly more manageable.

(And, amazingly, the world seemed to change all on its own).

I think it was Kenneth Tynan who called the 60's The Age Of Rubbish, and he probably has a point. Still, I'm glad I grew up in those times, and glad I grew out of them. But many of my friends never did... and though Joan Baez wasn't exactly a close personal friend, I grieve a little when I come across something like this about where her head is at these days.

Insert Twilight Zone music as needed.

george bush & harry truman

I was wondering if there were any historical parallels for Bush’s victory, and Harry Truman popped into mind. (Note: In 1948, when Truman ran for re-election, he had been President for almost four years -- FDR having died a few months into his fourth term.)
The parallels:
Like Bush, Truman was a hick from the south.

Like Bush, he seemed at first glance to be utterly unequipped for the job he had gotten almost by accident.

Like Bush, he had taken a controversial and deadly action -- dropping an atom bomb on two defenseless Japanese cities.

Like Bush, he had a wild-hair-up-the-ass idea: that he could reconstruct Europe if Congress passed something called the Marshall Plan.

Like Bush, he was universally regarded as a lightweight by the media (okay, newspapers) elite based in Boston, New York, and Washington.

And, like Bush, Truman’s opponent in 1948 was a cautious, smooth-talking Ivy Leaguer with lots of friends in the media.

Everyone in the press, everyone who was anyone, assumed Tom Dewey would clean Harry Truman’s clock. They couldn’t quite grasp the possibility that ordinary Americans in the middle of the country might take a gander at Dewey and come to the conclusion that he was snooty and kind of wishy-washy and you couldn't be quite sure where he stood on things. With Truman you knew where he stood, even if you disagreed with him.

And the people who thought they had it all figured out couldn’t read an electoral map.

If you looked at how people voted in 1948, the BLUE (Democrat) states would be in the middle, and the RED (Republican) states would be on the two coasts and in urban areas… precisely the reverse of the electoral map today. (Truman did win California, but barely).

In 1948, it was the Democrats in middle America who had the hopeful vision of what a democratic Europe might look like. Sure, it was going to cost taxpayers some money, and require some sacrifices on America's part in the short term, but in the long term, most of those farmers and factory workers with a high school education but a graduate degree in common sense seemed to sense they'd be better off in the long run living on the other side of the ocean from an economically secure Europe where people had the vote. And it was the timid Republicans on the two coasts who were saying, Oooh, gee, what about spending that money on jobs here at home? while they sipped their martinis and chuckled at New Yorker cartoons.

In 1948, it was the Democrats who were the military hawks and the Republicans who were the isolationist doves. In 1948, it was the Democrats who were the inclusive and tolerant party of the people in the middle of the country. The party favored by wealthy, educated, and sophisticated urbanites -- exclusive and intolerant -- was the Republicans back then.

The political parties in America have done an almost perfect 180 degree spin.

The Democrats of Harry Truman’s time (salt of the earth kind of people) have become George Bush Republicans.

And all those stylish bi-coastal Republicans who thought Truman was an unsophisticated hick have morphed into (gasp!) John Kerry Democrats.

No wonder I’m having trouble with my party affiliation.

a solid start

George Bush just held his first press conference since the election. My first impression: if he'd been this confident and articulate during the debates, he'd have won by ten points.

He was, to put it mildly, sensational. Instead of the awkward, wary Bush we're so used to seeing, W seemed relaxed, comfortable... and completely in charge. In fact, for the first time that I can recall, he seemed to be enjoying it. (And remember: for this President, giving a news conference is like Michael Moore attending a meeting of Pentacostals. 90% of the people asking him questions would probably agree with this headline from a London tabloid this morning: "How can 59 million people be so dumb?")

And talk about a ballsy, big-swinging-dick agenda. Lots of candidates have talked about taking on Social Security. Bush is actually gonna do it, and now, without having to worry about getting re-elected, he can afford to step on some toes with those big old cowboy boots. Crunch.

the sky is falling

Okay. The election is over, and everyone I know is heartbroken. I've spent the morning on the phone with disappointed Democrats, who seem uniformly stunned at the margin of victory and seem reduced to muttering unhappily about the power of the religious right and the ineptitude of Kerry's campaign.

My message to them:

1. Bush and his team aren't the zealous and incompetent nincompoops you think they are. And red state Americans aren't all bible thumping ignoramuses -- any more than blue state Americans are all latte-sipping pacifists.

2. If you think Iraq is a mess, you should have been an American at Valley Forge or Bull Run or Omaha Beach. Look: everyone knew that going into Iraq was a gamble. Paul Wolfowitz knew it. Rumsfeld knew it. Cheney and Bush knew it. But doing nothing meant leaving Saddam's Spawn in charge of Iraq for the next thirty years, during which time I think it's fairly safe to assume they'd have gotten their sweaty little hands on a nuke, or a new strain of anthrax, or something that would have amused a couple of fun loving guys like Uday and Kusay. Instead, someone -- I think it was U.S. soldiers -- shot them dead. I'm glad, and so are most Americans, red state or blue.

3. Next time, nominate someone who has a fighting chance to carry a southern state. No more Mondales or Dukakii or Kerrys, with their mournful faces and lugubrious ways. No more fat Al Gores flopsweating with rage at the country that didn't quite elect him. No more Hillarys. No more core constituency of angry leftists with their hysterical rants and emptyheaded coffeehouse screeds. No more Al Frankens. Here's a thought: next time around, see if you can't nominate somone who's genuinely optimistic and personally exuberant. Someone the average American factory worker or accountant might like to have over for dinner... a Bill Clinton, maybe, without the velcro zipper.

4. Lose the class-warfare thing. It's not playing in Peoria. And instead of blaming Peoria, come up with a domestic agenda isn't based on envy and resentment.

5. Tie a Pontiac Cutlass to Michael Moore and dump him in Lake Michigan. (Okay. Two Pontiac Cutlasses.) This guy did more to lose the election for the Democrats than you can possibly imagine.

6. Flood the mainstream media with emails and letters urging them to look up the words "fair" and "balanced" in the dictionary. Suggest they re-read their Journalism 101 textbooks. Right now, they're just killing you.

7. Take a dip in the blogosphere. It's an amazing place.

8. Don't lose heart.

9. Fare forward.

percentages

To the 49% of us who are gnashing their teeth and rending their hair and tempted to think the middle of the country is filled with a bunch of dolts, relax. I know you don't believe it, but the country is being run by serious, thoughtful people.

To the 51% of us who are breathing a sigh of relief, resist the temptation to gloat. There's a lot of hard work and tough times ahead for all of us.

The news is reporting that Kerry is going to call Bush to concede. Way to behave responsibly, Senator.

false alarm

Last night, I sat on the roof of my apartment building on 16th Street in our nation's capital, about a dozen blocks north of the White House. Nice, warm evening, the Washington Monument all lit up, the Capitol building just to the left, also lighted. I could see planes landing at Reagan airport across the river, and was remembering what it was like in the days after 9/11, when there were no airplanes (except military jets) in the sky for nearly a week.

And as I watched, I saw an airplane wheeling in the sky, and suddenly it seemed to me the lights were heading straight at the Washington Monument. Just a trick of the eyes and the distance I told myself. Nonetheless, I put down my gin & tonic and stared at the lights in the air inching imperceptibly closer to the great white spike on the mall, and felt a tiny clutch of fear before the plane changed course and headed (or so I thought) toward the Reagan runways.

Then -- another course change. The lights were now coming directly toward me, as if 16th Street were a runway. And getting lower. Five seconds later, I realized that the lights were lined up and headed directly at the White House.

I was so transfixed by the sight I didn't notice that someone else was on the roof standing next to me."Is that plane aimed at the White House?" he said.

"It kind of looks like it, doesn't it," I said. We watched for another few seconds in silence. Then the lights dipped out of view. Both of us backed away from the rail, and waited for the explosion. "Shit," he said. "If there's a nuke in that plane, we're toast."

I just nodded, thinking, if there's a nuke in that plane, we're all toast -- America, the west, civilization. We waited a while more but the expected fireball of thousands of pounds of jet fuel igniting and turning the place that was first occupied in 1800 by America's second President, John Adams, into a cinder never materialized.

After a while, the lights reappeared, hovering somewhere near the mall.

"I guess it's just a helicopter," he said finally. "Scared the piss out of me. For a moment."

"Me too," I said.

"Weird times," he said, and wandered back inside.

I stood there for a few more minutes, thinking how strange it was to live in a city with a target on its back at a time when you can see some lights in the sky and almost instantly assume -- not without reason -- that the nation is once again under attack... not by disguntled prostitutes or gamblers, but by people who hate us from the bottoms of their tortured little hearts.

please

Please, please, please: when the next election season begins the day after tomorrow, can we all promise to raise the level of debate just a little bit?

I know we're not going to go back to Lincoln-Douglas, but enough of "I've got a Plan!" and "It's hard work!"

(Note to DNC: Next time, nominate someone who has a pulse and a spine.)

(Note to RNC: Next time, nominate someone who can actually articulate the powerful & serious line of reasoning that got us into Iraq and gave all those rich people a tax cut.)

links

Re: the American Al Qaida guy and Osama bin Laden's recent videotapes. This from one of my favorite blogs. (For all of you who are terrified about what Karl Rove and the Republican Hit Machine are up to, it's even worse than you think.)

halloween blues

I have counted up all the people I know, and made a list of who is going to vote for who. The final tally:

KERRY: 47
BUSH: 4
UNDECIDED: 1

All in all, pretty depressing. I even heard from my grandson, dressed as an octopus, when we went trick-or-treating tonight. At one point during our rounds he looked up at me, his tentacles bouncing up and down, and said, sorrowfully, "Don't vote for Bush."

"Why not?"
"Because he's bad."
"Who says?"
"Everyone."

Everyone? My God, has it come to this?

Later, over mulled cider, my son, an extremely thoughtful young man who admires Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and doesn't think school vouchers will mean the End of Civilization As We Know It, informs me that he, too, has gone over to The Dark Side... joining his sister, his mother, all his in-laws... and 47 of my friends, and Tucker Carlson, and Christopher Hitchins, and millions of other bewitched souls who just don't seem to get it.

Then again, maybe it's me who doesn't get it.

redskins curse

As you may or may not know, there is a 100% correlation between how the Washington Redskins do in their last home game and the Presidential election. When the Redskins win, so does the incumbent party.

The Redskins lost today, signalling a Kerry victory.

Interestingly, the Redskins scored the winning touchdown in the last few minutes of the game -- only to have it taken away by an official who spotted an infraction invisible to all other observers.

(A number of announcers immediately assumed that the official has a Kerry button tatooed to his ass.)

(I don't doubt it for a second.)

The sad conclusion is that Kerry will win on Tuesday (or sometime, maybe much later), but that "officials" of some type will be needed to make it happen.

If you thought Karl Rove was bad before, check this out from A Small Victory, one of my favorite blogs.