Huff 'n Puff

With election fever raging in America, The Huffington Post has become my bookmarked blog for all things election-related.  

It's easy to affect bored indifference at the nonstop election coverage in the media, but the fact remains that this is a particularly crucial contest, and whoever emerges victorious as the next President of the United States is going to have a profound impact on our world order.  Is it going to be the hot-headed, traumatized prisoner-of-war held hostage by the rabid right wing and his suddenly expensively coiffed and dressed pseudo-Hockey Mom of a Vice President?  Or will it be the man of admittedly little experience yet deep intelligence and measured calm along with his extremely capable and seasoned running mate?

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley writes in her HuffPo piece Goodbye, Cruel World that 

Most of my friends see the coming election as the most important we have known. The right wing has damaged our country, our livelihoods, our national honor, and our planet, but not yet fatally.

Electing the wrong candidate, she says, would be tragic.  Describing both candidates, the notes that the differences between them are stark:

John McCain, who was raised by and accepts the authoritarian model, is evidently never at peace. He is hot-headed, erratic, and has been remarkably cruel. He claims to have principles, but his principles change every time he loses his cool. The more he is pushed, the more it becomes evident that he lives by his own selfish desires -- for money, for power, for women. He's is a classic avoider, who can't even answer the simplest question -- if something "unpleasant" comes up, he changes the subject. Barack Obama rarely changes the subject, because he is fully capable of looking at an issue and considering it. He seems to have been reared in a non-authoritarian household, by a loving mother and loving grandparents. He thinks that the world is a rational place that can be understood and modified. His own family seems happy and loving. Right wingers think he is shallow, but he isn't shallow -- he's well-adjusted. And we've had two whole years to poke him and prod him and discover this. Obama has grown through campaigning because he has learned from it. McCain gets ever smaller and more weird as he campaigns because he doesn't understand what is happening to him.

OMG, did I marry John McCain?  

I am SO voting for Obama.

Comments

[Mrs.T]

Hilarious last statement there, but there is so much truth to what Jane Smiley wrote. So glad that Obama won. It's a milestone for US politics and the shock wave will be felt throughout the world.

[bambinawrites]

Mrs T, I think it's fantastic that Obama won, and I feel privileged to be alive to witness this historic moment!