Things I'd Like to Forget About the 2008 Election

I wish I could say that my anxiety levels have decreased after the Election, but as one colleague said to me today: What's the matter with you? Aren't you exhilarated?

That's when my deeply neurotic self appeared. Yes, I celebrated like everyone else on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. I had spent an exhausting yet inspiring thirteen hours at the polls making sure that the promise of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was fulfilled. I cried, I laughed, I hugged and kissed strangers. I listened to people's stories and began to believe that a new America was dawning.

Then when I saw just how exhausted Barack Obama seemed at Grant Park, I began to worry again. Will this mortal man drown in the world's expectations?

By this morning, when I read about the U.S. bombing of the wedding party in Afghanistan killing 40 and injuring 28, I was almost back to 2001-2006 anxiety levels.

With advice from a social worker friend, I am about to shed some burden. I have decided to purposefully forget specific things about this election season.

First and foremost, I want to forget about Sarah Palin, her husband Todd, her pregnant teenage daughter, her newborn, and all of the other members of the Palin brood. According to the Anchorage Daily News, November 5, 2008, Alaska, too, is hoping to forget about the Sarah Palin who appeared on the national scene pandering to Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder, calling Obama a terrorist and a socialist, and assuming that her conservative values were best for everyone. As the McCain team begins the nasty process of distancing itself from the "Wasilla Hillbillies," who looted Neiman Marcus from coast to coast, more reasons to reduce Sarah Palin to a flash in the pan of celebrity politics will surface. Like her answering the door to her hotel room dressed only in a towel when Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, top McCain aides came a calling.

Jordan, my husband, is staking his reputation on never hearing about any wedding between Sarah's pregnant teenage daughter Bristol and that hockey-playing boyfriend Levi.

Like Tina Fey, I will be happy to allow Sarah Palin to fade into memory, although I suspect that one of two things will happen. She will either bone up on her geography (Fox News reported that she didn't know Africa was a continent) and try to convince the last vestiges of the slain and defeated Republican Party's ultra-right, Confederate-based, fundamentalist Christian wing that she could have been a contender, and should be a contender in 2012. Or more likely she will become a talk show host or pundit on Fox News for a day and a half. And then, we will never hear from her again.

I can also let go of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But not for the content of his sermons, which I didn't find offensive. And not for the passion, disappointment, regret, anger, despair that he communicated in the sermons that were somehow mysteriously discovered and uploaded onto YouTube when Barack Obama was first emerging as a serious candidate. I don't believe that any white person, myself included, has the right to dismiss, let alone judge, the emotions and experience of being an African American living in the United States. Certainly I have no right to call those feelings un-American, since they are the result of being treated as an outsider in one's own country.

The appearance of the Rev. Wright YouTube videos forced Obama to speak about race in the heat of the Democratic primary season, and that turned out to be a good thing for him and for our country. His March 18, 2008 speech in Philadelphia was a turning point in the campaign.

Race was out in the open for the first time. For Obama, he began to attract the attention of African American voters who had previously kept their allegiance with the Clintons. Afterall, Bill Clinton had been crowned the "first black" president, because of the scrutiny he withstood throughout his two terms in office. ( The label is properly attributed to Toni Morrison from an October 1998 essay in The New Yorker. ) After Philadelphia, Obama was finally black.

I fretted. I worried then big time that this would be the end of him. But it wasn't. It all fell aside until last weekend when I was in Tucson and turned on MSNBC. There it was: the horrendous 527 ad from the National Republican Trust featuring the Rev. Wright once again, intending one thing: to scare people in Arizona and across the battleground states into fearing Obama as some kind of radical. Thankfully, it didn't work.

Lastly, I'd like to forget the Hillbilly Hillary phase of the Democratic Primary season. I've always admired Hillary Clinton. I got to meet her back when she was still First Lady during her "listening" tour of New York when she was deciding whether to run for the Senate. I met her at Mario's Pizza where she kindly and thoughtfully spoke to my then ten year old daughter. I've heard her speak before partisan crowds, at the New York Democratic Women's luncheons, where I stood and clapped and called out approvingly. I've heard her speak before mixed audiences where she showed how smart and hard working she has been for her constituents.

Up until Super Tuesday, I wasn't sure whether I would vote for Hillary or Barack. I wanted a different tone to politics, I wanted an engaged electorate that included everyone, especially young people, so I cast my primary ballot for Barack Obama. Then I worried that I had made a mistake. My daughter berated me late into the night, screaming at me for betraying my desire to see a woman in the White House as president.

Then Hillary went hillbilly. Not surprisingly on March 18th, the same day Barack Obama delivered his moving speech about the role of race in America. By April, Hillary was downing beers to try to prove, despite her Wellesley College and Yale Law School degrees, that she was one of the people. This was code, of course, for Hillary trying to become the candidate of white working people. She changed her rhetoric to try to paint Obama as an inexperienced elitist.

Even Bill, the first black president, went down the tubes. I remember the night before the Iowa caucus. My daughter and I watched a speech on C-Span that Bill gave in an Iowa high school gym. He spoke about why people should vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton. He never used the word "wife." We cried together. We marveled at how smart he is, how smart she is. I adored Bill Clinton until South Carolina.

I want to remember Hillary Clinton as a sophisticated, smart, savvy woman who wanted to be the first woman president of the United States, but because we shouldn't have dynasties, missed her chance. She is a great Senator, she is a great person, and she certainly has a lot to offer us in her public life. But let's forget the hillbilly phase.

Maybe I will be able to sleep tonight.

The Ghost of Lee Atwater Haunting the Election

Make no mistake: although Lee Atwater is dead, and he repented on his death bed for his ruthless and amoral strategies for running the Bush I campaign and the Republican Party itself, there remain his protegees. Karl Rove, Tucker Bounds, and those whose names we don't know, but who owe their philosophies to Atwater.

Tonight I went to see a film called Boogie Man: The Story of Lee Atwater. Here is a link to the trailer.

The film is frightening, because the Republican Party, the party that has used family and Christian values as the key to its appeal to trick people into voting against their own economic interests, has been led by amoral men who do not believe in any higher power than power itself.

Go see Boogie Man. Go see Boogie Man before the election. Get scared to death, scared enough to actually stand on line for hours on Tuesday and vote. Scared enough to make some phone calls and canvas for a few hours over the weekend. Scared enough to drive friends, family, and even strangers to the polls.

If you recall, Lee Atwater was responsible for electing Bush I, by flat out lying about the role Bush I played as vice president in the Iran Contra scandal and running one of the most racist campaigns in the history of modern politics: recall the Willie Horton ad.

Atwater was crowned chair of the GOP as a reward after Bush beat Michael Dukakis, but soon afterwards was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Before he became too ill, he was already spreading rumors about then Governor Bill Clinton whom he understood was the up and coming Democrat to beat. With Atwater dead, Clinton won in 1992, leaving Bush I with a single rather than a double term as president, and a younger Bush with a score to settle.

The seeds of deception were already sown, and for eight years Clinton was plagued by rumors, investigations, and the waste of $70 million in the Whitewater investigation that led to Monica Lewinsky, a blow job, and his impeachment.

The testing of Barack Obama, if he is elected, in the opening weeks or months of his administration, will more likely originate from the protegees of Lee Atwater's radical Republican Party than from any foreign powers.