Prose To Go

Whew. I got my exercise Sunday. I drove along Fletcher Avenue, where cars whiz by at 60 mph, to plant McCain/Palin signs amongst the grass and weeds.

Near Starbucks, I ran into a blonde who asked me for a sign because someone had stolen hers. I said, "Those Obama people" and shook my head. We both agreed the election is not over yet, even though a young man in a beat-up red compact had just chided me, "Give it up; it's over."

"It's never over," the blonde told me. I nodded. "I don't want to pay people to be on welfare," I said. To me, Obama's tax plan looks like a big, fat government handout. When the budget deficit is over $1 trillion? Makes no sense to me, and I don't want to saddle my teenage nephews with it.

She wasn't the only one to get my attention. A Starbucks employee had spotted me and drove several hundred yards after me to grab a sign, too. Even though I only had 25 for a 3-mile stretch that seemed longer, I had to give her one. Her smile was worth it.

A young woman with a child in the back seat and husband smoking at the wheel also pulled alongside my vehicle and pleaded for a sign. I felt a twinge of regret, though, after I handed it to her and she squealed "Now we have three!"

Several people honked at me and waved, although I'd chosen to wear a teal-colored T-shirt rather than a McCain/Palin one. I didn't relish the thought of an Obama supporter harassing me. "We don't want your kind around here," one man hollered from his pick-up truck.

Oh, really? I wondered. Who made him king of his apartment complex or wherever he was driving to this Sunday afternoon? I cursed to myself as I jumped back into my SUV.

It's sad that some people feel the need to bash the other side in this race. While it's heartening to see a hundred or more voters standing in line at my library for early voting - the wait is often two hours or longer - I'm discouraged that people resort to negativity to make their points.

The media has thoroughly disappointed me as well. Except for a few bright spots like columnists David Broder, Charles Krauthammer and Fox News, it has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic for Obama. They have every right to do so, but it hurts their credibility when each news story is slanted towards the Democrats. In fact, it will probably come back to haunt them later, especially in Republican states like Florida.

Mostly, though, I want my First Amendment right to express myself, to support the candidate of my choice. Here's my request: "Stop stealing our signs!"

Good Lord. Will this campaign ever end? Will Nov. 4 ever arrive?

I’m awash and drowning in the sea of Negativity. The sheer nastiness of it makes me want to vomit.

Sorry for that icky illusion, but seriously, “Everybody lighten up.”

Obama and McCain are both funny guys. Why don’t we ever see that? Why do they feel they must resort to name calling, comparing their friends and enemies, tit for tat?

It’s like watching two 5-year-olds locked into a fight on the playground and nobody will stop it.

Yet kids also have a wonderful sense of humor. What happened to John and Barack? Why are they letting their advisers confuse them?

What happened to McCain joking about Chicago’s election in 1960? When dead people voted for JFK and God knows how many other politicians? “Vote early and vote often.”

Instead, we get hatchet jobs like a Washington Post article comparing him to a fun-loving alcoholic who decided in the Hanoi Hilton to single-mindedly pursue the White House. He came home, dumped his wife and hooked up with the gravy train, Cindy. Somehow, he charmed his way into the Senate.

Huh? He was a Navy pilot. Must have had some brains, right? You also need nerves of steel.

Obama is funny, too. He jokes about Michelle the enforcer. She keeps him in line. Nothing wrong with that. They obviously are crazy about each other. But New York magazine had to get ugly – well, words cannot describe how hateful it was. Those ridiculous images of her, degrading her as a black woman nagging her man. Give me a break.

Thank God we still have Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert … and the Alfred E. Newman … oops, I mean Smith Foundation charity dinner in Manhattan. Both guys let loose on each other, making fun of their ears, the Greek columns, John’s chipmunk face, Bill and Hillary’s presidential ambitions … the gamut.

But if it’s straight news, shut off that TV. I can’t deal anymore.

Yesterday I took a break from work and family by canvassing a few neighborhoods to get out the vote. While I am a registered Republican, I firmly believe in voting for the person, not the party. I have been registered since I was 17 and in my senior year of high school.

It was the first time I could make my voice count. Jimmy Carter was pitted against Ronald Reagan. The stakes were high, but when aren’t they? We were facing 21-percent interest rates, climbing unemployment rates, a hostage crisis in Iran that lasted over a year and the possibility of re-starting the dreaded draft that had taken so many innocent lives during Vietnam.

I read up on Carter and Reagan, as well as John Anderson, an Independent candidate from Illinois. Although we didn’t have blogs and cell phones back then to tell us how to think, we still had newspapers and television. It was my civic duty to exercise this right to vote – something people had fought and died for all over the world and right here seven generations ago, in the Civil War.

Friends, coworkers and family members debated who to vote for, and I pinned up a cartoon at work making fun of Reagan as “Shogun,” based on a popular movie with a super hero Samurai. Sometimes, the sound bites and fury overwhelmed me, and I wasn’t sure who to believe any more. Carter obviously was in over his head. He seemed like a good guy, but to get on national TV and blame the country for its malaise didn’t make much sense to me. Reagan, the actor with good looks and a commanding presence, was appealing. But did he have the wherewithal to go the distance, to make the tough calls?

Being raised a Democrat, I didn’t consider Reagan for long. What a lightweight, I thought. Yet I knew Carter was not a true leader. What the heck was I going to do?

In the end, I pulled the lever in New Jersey for Anderson. He bucked the two-party system, he made good arguments and at least if he got a good percentage, he’d receive federal funds to make it worth his while.

Now it’s 2008 and we face a worldwide economic panic. With about 10 other people, I am knocking on doors and asking people if they are voting and who they’ll choose. I’m also supposed to ask them to volunteer, to take up this cause with me. This last question seems pretty silly to me, because if you cared enough about this election, wouldn’t you already be out in the trenches?

I met two men living across the street from each other. Being a horrible judge of age, I’ll hazard that they were 80-something. One guy had a sweet young granddaughter of maybe 7 who was very helpful in finding her granddad. Each of these men told me they weren’t going to vote this year.

I was stunned. At a loss for words. Obviously, the sun and heat were messing with my mind. Not vote? It had never occurred to me.

Where’s my snappy comeback? “Think of your future, of this little girl’s future … something that transcends this time and place. Think about freedom, the huddled masses yearning to be free.” All these thoughts should have been on the tip of my tongue.

Instead, I gave each man literature and said “If you change your mind, here’s some literature.”

Duh. How ineffective. Last night, with lots of troubles on my mind, I slept fitfully.

This morning – clarity at last. I knew what to tell those two men, who thought maybe their lives are over now; they don’t need to vote any more.

Remember Iraq in December 2005? Thousands of people risked their very lives to get an ink stain on their finger, to stand up and be counted above the teeming morass on this crazy planet we call Earth. For 20-some years, a horrible man and his brutal regime forced them to vote for him or die. Two choices. That’s all they had.

Now, after all that time and many lives cut short, far too many to count and weep over, these people were waking up again. Their voices could be heard. One person, one vote. No matter what, these survivors were going to get there, even if it meant death.

They risked their lives for something we take for granted every day. A right and a privilege that we don’t always make the time for, because work has to be finished, children need to be fed, chores need to be finished. And these two men were willing to let freedom pass them by.

If I were a pundit, I’d quip: “These guys don’t get it.”

But if I had a chance to see them again, I’d say: “Think about Iraq.”

If you believe the media, you’d probably think that Barack Obama represents the second coming of John F. Kennedy. His flowery speeches have been compared to Kennedy’s, the Irish clan has supported Obama’s young family as a second Camelot White House and Democrats seem to believe he is the savior of the party -- sure to lead them back to the promised land of big government. Many polls show he now has a few points lead over John McCain nationally.

I wonder, however, just who is talking to the pollsters. Sure, I know a few friends and associates planning to vote for Obama. Yet it seems that most others I meet are undecided or voting for McCain.

If you read the newspapers carefully, most play up McCain’s speech ineptitude while taking it easy on the newbie, Obama. Recent AP stories illustrate the difference. Summing up recent events, Obama continued to hammer away at McCain, intoning the same old “Bush 3” chant. The sound bites we saw show everyone laughing at Obama’s joke about Phil Gramm and “Dr. Phil,” while conveniently omitting McCain’s retort that Gramm could be ambassador to Belarus, if the people of Minsk don’t mind.

The irony is that in 2000, McCain was the media darling, admired for his maverick image. Until the South Carolina primary that year, he seemed to be on the fast track for the Republican nomination. Until George W. Bush and his crew started fighting dirty, whispering rumors that McCain was gay, fathered a black child out of wedlock and that Cindy McCain was addicted to drugs. Did McCain, the guy with the so-called mean temper, start a feud with Bush? No. After losing the nomination race, he often supported Bush’s controversial policies, especially on the Iraq war. In the Republican Party, a united front is considered critical.

Although McCain voted for the Iraq War, by 2004, he had become one of its most outspoken critics. McCain was the lone voice in the wilderness fighting for more troops in Iraq; he vigorously and often spoke out against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “whack a mole” strategy of moving American troops from one violence-plagued part of Iraq to another.

McCain’s suggested surge has now worked and the violence has dropped considerably. Trouble, however, is now brewing again in Afghanistan – a nation with a long history of wars going back to Alexander the Great in 329 B.C. -- and many Democrats are quick to point the finger, once again, at the Iraq War as a distraction.

While Obama has made it clear he never voted for or supported the war and wrongly predicted that the surge would not work or decrease violence in Iraq, we have to face reality. We are embroiled in it. To gain a foothold in the Middle East is of urgent importance to America. It’s not about the oil alone; it comes down to protecting Israel and other sovereign countries there from continual coups and clashes that have been going on since the dawn of time. The bloodshed in Afghanistan alone is hard to picture.

In a July 14 New York Times opinion piece, Obama called the Iraq War “the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy.”

It’s too soon to say whether Iraq will be judged a strategic blunder at all, let alone the greatest one. Experts could argue that the Iraq war will lead to a tremendous defeat for al Qaeda. The war has already triggered an enormous Sunni Muslim uprising against al Qaeda, a rejection of violent jihadism from some of its first creators and a significant shift within the Muslim world against the jihadists' barbaric methods. Iraq is now the only true democracy in the Arab world. Let’s not forget, too, that Saddam Hussein, murderer of countless numbers of Kurds and his own people, is dead. It’s impossible to tell how many people’s lives will be saved by just one of these events.

In his quick sprint toward the center for the general election, Obama has changed his mind about immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It makes a voter wonder what else he will change his mind about.

Mostly, what I hear from him is what Americans can’t do, not what we can. Except for his promises of more aid to the poor, his messages sound defeatist. I haven’t witnessed a politician yet who won the White House with such a confused and negative message, have you?

Remember the old Who song "My Generation?" Most people recall the line "Hope I die before I get old."

Going to my nephew's graduation in Elizabethtown, PA, I realized that I am getting old. In a few brief years, my nephews could be having kids. First, of course, they need to find solid careers that will pay well and hopefully, they will enjoy.

Collin is almost 18 and has a part-time job frying chicken at a nearby restaurant. He will enter Penn State to study engineering this fall. My sister is urging him to do environmental engineering, but he is also interested in the mechanical kind.

While he loves some rap music and the band Velvet Revolver, Collin also is a fan of the music my sister and I grew up with, the Beatles being his favorite. They're my all-time faves, so I sent him the groundbreaking "Sgt. Pepper" CD last year.

Since I love children and have none of my own, I seek out girls and boys to discuss their goals and what they like. It's always fascinating. I've learned that many know AC/DC and Aerosmith, Kiss, the Rolling Stones and of course, the Who.

What intrigues me is my memories of my youth. We all despised our parent's music -- Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, even Ella Fitzgerald. Not because they weren't talented; just "square." Groovy? Not so much. Roll your eyes here. I didn't even get the huge sensation that Elvis was. Why would we want to listen to "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog"? We had Cream, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. Not to mention Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Doors.

Fast forward 40 years to the here and now. The world moves at the speed of light, and music has so many genres, choices and styles -- all moving at Mach 3. Singers like Madonna redo "American Pie," the Don McLean classic. Baby boomers gasp and shake their heads; how could she possibly take on such sacred songs?

Why not? I say. Today's singers revere those old songs; it's a wonderful flattery to those who originally composed them. That's why the call them classics. Time marches on, but the music is never forgotten.

If 23-year-old Meghan McCain plays Heart's "Barracuda" at 100 decibels, I say, "You go, girl. Find your groove. Be yourself."

Or as my graduation card said to Collin, "Go for it."

Because taking chances is what life is all about.