Reflections on the US Presidential Election
Paula and I had joined Gloria and the Guru for election night on November 6th.
We followed the results, sitting in the Guru’s home theatre with its huge TV screen.
The Guru and I had assembled a buffet table of food and drinks that we thought would be needed to keep us going until 2 or 3 am when we expected the TV networks to call the election.
Instead, the election was---of course---all over by 11.15 pm, just a few minutes after the polls in California had closed.
The four of us hugged each other and then sat grinning at the TV.
“You have to be pleased with yourself”, I said to the Guru. “Your predictions were spot on: that Obama would campaign on fairness and that he would win in a landslide.” (Ed. Note: once the Florida votes were counted, the Guru’s prediction of a landslide came true---he had thought the Electoral College vote total might be around 320. Instead it was even larger at 332.)
“Well, I am pleased but not for myself---for the US, for Canada and for the rest of the world. It’s a wonderful victory. We can all relax; the adults will continue to be in charge in the US.”
“Have you thought about how you will describe the election in your next newsletter?”
“As a matter of fact, I drafted it last night. Let me read part of it. The newsletter begins with this title: Mild-mannered Community Organizer Slays Lying Vulture Capitalist.”
“You’re not pulling your punches”, Paula grinned.
“Nor should I! The Romney campaign was an insult to democracy and to the intelligence of the voters. It was despicable, scurrilous, and dishonest---you’d need a thesaurus to do justice to just how awful it was.”
“Do you think”, I asked, “that toward the end Romney was intentionally playing the Samson and Delilah card that you talked about before, bringing down the temple, destroying himself and the Republican Party, so that the Party will have to be re-built?”
“That awful man,” Gloria cut in, “does not have an altruistic bone in his body. His only motive was to gain the White House by any means, fair or foul.”
“Well”, the Guru said, “whatever his motivation, the result was the same. The GOP will have to be totally re-shaped if the Party ever hopes to win the presidency again. But let me read a bit more from my newsletter. I say that the main lessons from the campaign are:
‘1. That politicians cannot build a coherent and defensible platform from lies and misrepresentations. This should be obvious, of course, but it seems that the lesson has to be re-learned every few decades.
2. That journalists who have lost, or are in danger of losing, their newspaper jobs and have learned the art of the blog and the 30 second TV sound-bite will have to go back to school to learn about the aggregation and statistical analysis of polls. They must study the work of statisticians like Nate Silver at the New York Times and Sam Wang at Princeton, who got the election right.
3. That the definition of 'ground game' has changed forever. It is no longer based on a few downtown storefront offices but on the community-organizer concept of many mini-offices located in volunteers' garages and dens in residential communities, linked by sophisticated communication and computer systems. Politicians better call on that genius, David Plouffe, of the Obama campaign.
4. That attempts to suppress the vote of minorities can backfire and make folks more determined to vote even if they have to wait 7 hours.
5. That money can’t buy you love and it can’t buy you an election either.’”
“Good stuff”, I said. “So what’s happening about your plans to study China?”
“I’m leaving the day after tomorrow for China for a week’s visit to plan a longer tour by the four of us in a few months. I’ll see your son in Shanghai and consult with some business contacts. When I come back we can plot out who and what we should see. I can’t wait to get away from North America, and away from the phony theatrics of the ‘fiscal cliff’ issue---which will of course be resolved before December 31st---and from the wailing and gnashing of teeth in the GOP about what went wrong and who is to blame.”
As Paula and I prepared to leave, I said to the Guru, “Even though you were adamant that Obama and his team would pull this off, you must be pleased that it all came to pass.”
“I am. I’ll confess that there were times when I began to have some second thoughts but I told myself to remember Churchill’s dictum: ‘You can always count on Americans to do the right thing---after they've tried everything else’. They did---once again.”
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If you have any comments, please leave them below (I've made it easier to leave a comment) or drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com. The next Icewine Guru posting will appear in the fullness of time. I have another blog, The Letter from Virgil, (http://letterfromvirgil.blogspot.com/) that appears from time to time.
