Presidential Politics 2004

"In 2004 we have seen the pattern repeated. John Kerry, a veteran who served with honor and distinction in Vietnam was told in countless surrogate ads that his service was not worthy and that his three purple hearts and his Silver Star for heroism were cheaply won. For a candidate who ducked military service by securing a preferential appointment to the Texas National Guard, part of which was served in Alabama, this takes gall indeed.
"Then Senator Zell Miller, his face contorted with anger, recited a litany of weapons systems that he said Senator Kerry had opposed. What he failed to say was that most of these military cuts were recommended by a Secretary of Defense named Richard Cheney in the first Bush Administration!
"The last time I looked, the Ten Commandments still included an injunction against bearing false witness."
--Bishop John Shelby Spong

Well, the election is over, and Red America has spoken.

Thanks to voters in the South, Plains and Rockies, for whom the primary qualities they expect in a President are a drawl and a swagger, George W. Bush has won another four years in the White House. We can look forward to four more years of callous disregard for the environment, world opinion, fiscal sanity, and minority rights. Four more years of gutting Social Security so that it collapses by the time the tail end of the Baby Boom has retired. Four more years of reckless foreign adventures. Forty years of a right-wing Supreme Court.

So thank you, Southern, Plains and Mountain voters. But I've really had enough of you, too. I heard enough whining last night about your supposed resentment against "coastal elites" who see the rest of the country as "flyover country" I could fill my bathtub with tears.

I'm tired of having to act as if the South won the Civil War. Even here in Wisconsin I see rebel flags everywhere. The football team of one of the local high schools in town, the Horlick Rebels, plays under the confederate flag, in spite of African Americans who see that flag as a symbol of racism. You'd think that hereabouts, descendants of our state's brave soldiers who fought and died to preserve the Union might view that flag as a symbol of treason. Descendants of veterans for truth might speak out against the Confederate flag as a symbol of treason, but, no, it's politically incorrect to say anything against that flag.

Or should that be "politically righteous"?

When a candidate from one party uses the term "Massachusetts Liberal" as a put-down, just who is looking down whose nose at whom? The last time we heard "Massachusetts Liberal" as an insult, an ad hominem argument that "not just ideologically, but also geographically, this person is not qualified to be president," was when the elder George Bush campaigned against Governor Mike Dukakis.

We did not hear Bill Clinton referred to as an "Arkansas Liberal."

We did not hear Al Gore referred to as a "Tennessee Liberal."

The message is that as wicked as Liberals are, being from Massachusetts is even worse. Something to be looked down on. Shunned. Despised. They ain't one of us good folk from the heartland. And the same can be said of people from other disreputable places such as New York and certain cities in California.

Consider Southern Liberal John Edwards: if he had been from anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, would anyone have taken him seriously as a presidential candidate, or even as vice-presidential timber? Or Howard Dean: if he had been from Kentucky, he'd have been the one who swept the primaries, his Iowa scream just another rebel yell. (In the interest of full disclosure: I cast my primary vote for Edwards, in spite of his brief senatorial record.)

For that matter, if G.W. Bush had listed Kennebunkport as his primary residence, and grew up talking like his Dad, he wouldn't have been taken any more seriously in 1999-2000 than, say, Dan Quayle, who at least had a higher grade point average in college than our eloquent Commandmentizer In Chief.

However, if you want me to believe that it wasn't geography but issues that drove this election, fine. Have it your way. I agree, to the extent that exit polls support the notion that Karl Rove and the Republican Party did their best to drive this election on God, guns, and gay-bashing.

In a way, it is hardly surprising that the voters who overwhelmingly voted for Bush should be those southern and rural voters who cited "Moral Values" as their Number One concern. In those politically righteous regions of our country, far away from foreign terrorists' most tempting targets, keeping the country safe from Osama bin Laden probably doesn't present the sense of urgency that keeping the country safe from homosexuals does. (Foreign terrorism is a lot like crime that way. Rural and suburban voters can just move further away from the problem and get more guns, and blame the problem on those godless urban liberals who don't have the sense to do the same.)

Say... Wouldn't it just serve Dixie right if the three choices for President in November, 2008 turned out to be Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg?

Well, this has been a long, bitter screed, but it's time for us to come together: both loyal patriotic Americans, and people who like the Confederate flag. There were things that were said in the heat of the fourth paragraph above, but in the interest of moving on in a spirit of reconciliation and reaching out to people who share my goals, I am willing to accept that people who like the Confederate flag have the right to live their lives with all due respect from their fellow citizens. I don't necessarily think that they should flaunt their Confederate flag-waving lifestyle in public where impressionable children might see them, but whatever flag they wish to fly, as long as it's behind closed doors in the privacy of their own home, is up to them.

See how magnanimous I'm being about this? Ain't I being a uniter now?

Yeah, right.