I took Tuesday afternoon off of work to spend it doing whatever the Wisconsin Dems thought would be most useful. I ended up waving a Kerry Edwards sign on a street corner in a small community outside of Madison, which was actually substantially more fun than it probably sounds.
I never thought I’d see a nice-looking old grandma type give me the finger on the same afternoon I saw a middle-aged white guy give me (a not-quite-middle-aged white guy) the black power salute.
Grandma was far from alone in finding her middle finger to be the most eloquent response to “Kerry Edwards – For A Stronger America”. Other notable reacations on the not-so-positive side included:
* the old man who rolled down his window to say “you can’t possibly be that stupid” while turning
* lots of thumbs down, some with dramatic tension – as if they could _really_ get me if I thought the thumb was going up
* a pack of teenagers chanting “4 more years” from the school bus
* held noses, as if to limit the olfactory offense of my Kerry Edwards sign
* a young woman – maybe late teens or early twenties – who leaned halfway out of the passenger window of her car to deliver a two-handed bird flip while screaming “F*CK YOU” at a rather substantial volume
* the threat: “the police are on their way” (to do what, exactly? — they never came)
I woke up feeling optimistic and energized on Tuesday. From my point of view at the time, all of the above was more than offset by an outpouring of enthusiastic honking, cheering, thumbs up, and so forth. The spirit of a victory party was clear in the Kerry supporters I saw, while the Bush fans just seemed, well, angry and mean.
I’ll never know with any precision what the objective balance of opinion that drove by me on that corner was, but it was clearly a microcosm of sorts. I’ve thought about that microcosm while hearing the unity rhetoric that inevitably follows an electoral contest. GWB from yesterday’s speech:
…today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.
This, from the man whose first 4 years as “a uniter, not a divider” have let not only to what is widely regarded as the most divisive election in 36 years, but found government institutions in substantial conflict (CIA vs. DoD/White House, for example), driven a wedge through our allies (“Old Europe”, “Freedom Fries”, and repeated willful misrepresentation of the well-intentioned but regrettable Kerry phrase “global test”), and squandered historically unprecedented worldwide unity following the attacks of September 2001. Tell me, GW, are mandatory loyalty oaths a step towards how we “come together and work together”?
I have no personal ill will for Bush supporters by virtue of their support for Bush alone (as I learned on Tuesday, the converse is apparently not true). But puh-leeze, we don’t actually have a whole lot of common cause — none of the countless substantive reasons this was such a divisive election season have changed in the past 72 hours. Quite the contrary, apparently one day of playing nice-nice was enough for the administration:
“I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” Bush told reporters. “It is my style.”
It’s going to be a long four years.
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