I'm an America-hating liberal

I’ve been reluctant to write about the election results, but it’s so momentous I just can’t help myself. Of course, I’ll leave the heavy lifting to deeper thinkers and get right down to business with the points the paid pundits always overlook.

• I’ve been getting to see what I looked like eight years ago after George W. Bush was elected. A Republican bar buddy of mine was moaning that he was convinced the world was about to end. I tried to console him by saying, “Look, I know just how you feel. In 2000, I was sitting right where you are and telling everyone who’d listen that the election of George W. Bush would result in financial ruin, a divided nation and that the only good thing about him as president was at least he'd be too stupid to instigate some costly overseas folly that would unnecessarily cause bloodshed and near catastrophic loss of national prestige.” Then I laughed maniacally.

• To me the most fascinating person to emerge from the election wasn’t Sarah Palin, but her soon-to-be son-in-law, 18-year-old Levi Johnson. He’s soon to become a father and part of one of what will be the second most scrutinized family in the Northern Hemisphere. My biggest concern when I was 18 was crafting a fake ID that might pass as legit in a dimly lit bar. I’m predicting he’ll be the breakout star of the Palin reality show I bet is already being discussed.

• I can admit I wasn’t really mature enough to be a married father until I was 40. By that time I’d been married for seven years and had been a father for three.

• At least twice a week, my wife still gives me looks I decode as meaning, “When the hell are you ever going to grow up?” It’s bound to happen one of these days.

• I was talking music with some old buddies last spring and we were all discussing our favorites. Names like Dylan, The Stones, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, The Replacements and Todd Snider were mentioned. All cool. Then one of the guys started gushing about the band America, the 70s hitmakers of “Horse with No Name,” and others too vapid and tedious to recall. We all looked at him like he was insane. Ever since then, every time I hear Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaching the sermon that includes the rant, “Goddamn America!” I wonder if he’s referring to that offensively mainstream pop band. I believe there’s a chance he is and that would really help put the whole thing in a new perspective.

• I wonder if there’s any YouTube tapes of Rev. Wright saying things like, “and goddamn Gordon Lightfoot, too!”

• I was a big Bill Clinton fan because when he spoke he really made me believe in him. The difference with Obama and just about everyone else I’ve ever heard is that he makes me believe in us. He makes me believe we’re capable of doing great things. I think he’s wrong about me, but I’m good company when the rest of you come into the bar to tell me about the great things you’ve done and that’s fine with me.

• George Bush is, maybe for the first time, looking positively presidential in the gracious way he’s recognizing the historic portent of the Obama election and how he’s committed to ensuring a seamless transition. It figures, the only time I’d have anything good to say about Bush is the way he’s leaving office. Still, every time I hear his approval rating is around 24, I have to wonder if it’s 24 percent or just 24 people.

• McCain’s concession speech was moving, but am I the only guy who finds it jarring to hear him get weepy about what a fine gentleman Obama is and what a splendid president he’ll make after he’s spent the past six months telling us he’s a dangerous America-hating Marxist whose only government experience comes in building bombs to toss at the Pentagon?

• The funniest line I heard through the whole campaign was from a black woman who was being interviewed on CNN who said the best thing wasn’t just that a black man was going to be president, but that he had this whole beautiful, intact family as role models. “We haven’t had a whole, intact black family to look up to since The Huxtables and they weren’t even real.” She wasn’t trying to be funny.

• My plumber’s a nice, quiet guy. He comes in, we exchange pleasantries, he fixes the leaks and then hands me a bill that always leaves me wondering if it isn’t too late for me to go to plumbing school. But if he ever comes in and starts talking about things like the capital gains tax or NAFTA, I’m going to snatch a wrench from his belt and beat the ever living daylights out of him.

• The Republicans can have Joe the Plumber, I’m glad we have Bruce the Strummer. Springsteen’s never done anything in his life that’s made me anything but busting with pride to be an American fan of his. It’s a lucky privilege for all of us to be on the planet at the same time he’s up and about.

• I don’t care if the Republicans spend the next 40 years wandering lost in the wilderness, and if they think the country’s going to rally around them based on the combined wisdoms of Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin that’s exactly where they’re going to wind up.

• “. . . and goddamn Captain & Tennille!”

The Religious Wrong and the bravest man in America

The last time a crowd of otherwise law-abiding citizens transformed themselves into bloodthirsty mobs the way supporters of McCain-Palin do was at the trial that led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m not saying McCain is Pontius Pilot or that Barack Obama is Christ, but when the crazy hyperbole gets flying it’s hard to resist joining in on the fun.

Nobody on the planet comes unhinged like the Religious Wrong. You’d think the disastrous Bush presidency would at least leave them open-minded to having someone they wrongly suspect to be a closet Muslim might be worth a try, but no. And again I’m left to wonder why a group that so vocally declares to have found one Messiah is always so restlessly seeking another.

Clearly, they haven’t found him in McCain, whose campaign is in the midst of what will be regarded as a historic meltdown. By any measure, this is one of the worst campaigns we’ve seen in the past 30 years. Just today, one of the leading conservative voices in the country (i.e. “enormous horse’s ass”) Bill Kristol urged McCain to fire his entire staff and start again.

With 22 days before the election! Yeah, great time to start all over in a campaign that’s been going on for two years.

The John McCain I’ve always admired finally resurrected himself last week when he proved he’s the second bravest man in America. He did this by standing up to his own frothing supporters to tell them that, contrary to what Palin’s been telling them, that Barack Obama’s a decent family, a proud American and that, no, we have nothing to fear with him as our president.

For this he was booed.

And now, for him, it’s too late. This election’s over. It’s destined to be won by the bravest man in America.

That’s Barack Obama.

Unlike McCain, he’s never had to duck a bullet, never gone into combat or had to crash land behind enemy lines.

But what he’s doing today is braver than anything any veteran’s done in those fearsome circumstances.

He’s standing near naked before crowds of 20,000 to 80,000 people knowing that there’s a well-armed and hate-filled fraction of America that wants him dead. We all know of bitter racists, deranged religious zealots, and Right Wing crazies -- sometimes all three in one -- and we know some of them have lethal potential.

They shout “Kill him!,” “Traitor!” and “Off with his head!” at rallies. Just today, the chairman of the Virginia GOP, Jeffrey Frederick, said he was no different than Osama bin Laden. Think that won’t egg on some deranged believer to begin diabolical plots in the belief that they’re patriotically acting with God on their side?

John Wilkes Booth, an actor with the equivalent popularity that Brad Pitt enjoys today, pulled the trigger behind Abraham Lincoln’s ear and brazenly jumped on the Ford Theater stage knowing he'd be recognized and believing he’d be hailed as a hero.

I can’t fathom the bravery of a father of two young daughters who’ll go out and stand on a stage knowing that his opposition is saying he’s dangerous, that he’s chummy with Al-Quaeda, and that their most primal fears about dark-skinned men with exotic names are more than justified.

I hope Obama wins in landslide. Then I hope he gets into the White House and plants himself so deeply into the secure bunker so that no one can hurt him or his family.

And then I hope he begins to do many great things.

Debate analysis you won't see on TV

• Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of me and the Bronze Fonz statue in Milwaukee. Now, onto the debate analysis.

• I was surprised to see McCain’s a lefty when it comes to handwriting. I’m sure some obscure expert’s done an analysis saying some of our best/worst presidents have been lefthanders. That won’t factor into whether or not I’ll vote for him, but I just hope he’s never sits down to my right if we ever wind up together in the same cafeteria.

• Commentators immediately began focusing on the candidates’ body language. Not me. I was drawn to the body language of the captive audience. They sat mostly immobile for the first 30 minutes, but there was a monumental amount of background fidgeting during the home stretch. There were toe tappers, knee bouncers, thumb twiddlers and an entire corp of nap-jerking yawn stiflers throughout. I’d wagered with my wife that bald guy with the blue shirt in the back row was going to fall asleep. I lost.

• I believe if the country could survive eight years of the idiot Bush, it can survive anything. I’m all in for Obama, but last night left me feeling a surge of optimism knowing that one way or the other we’re going to have a president who at least knows how to pronounce simple words like “nuclear.”

• It was annoying how often grumpy Tom Brokaw kept reminding everyone that the participants had gone seconds over their agreed upon time. Neither seemed that long winded to me, and he kept cutting them off just as true debate seemed about to emerge. I’ve been to parties with nagging clock watchers like him. It’s no fun.

• I understand the rules that say the audience shouldn’t applaud, but I think it would add to the debates if they were all instructed to yell and holler any time either of the candidates said a secret word like say, “bailout,” “Main Street” or “Petraeus.” They always had secret words on Pee Wee’s Playhouse and it was always riotous good fun. Try it around your own house someday.

• Do you think people in the audience had to raise their hands and get the go ahead nod from Brokaw if they had to go to the bathroom?

• I like it when candidates -- and both of them did this -- pronounce the names “Pock-e-stan” and “Tolly-bon” instead of “Packistan” or “Toweliban.” It makes the evil doers seem less intimidating, like they are populated by Oompa Loompas, albeit ones with murderous dispositions.

• I give huge credit to the audience members for being able to stand up and ask either of the candidates a question knowing that there were maybe 60 million people watching and that many of them were like me and my wife. We didn’t listen to a word they said, but made disparaging remarks about their hair, their eyeglass frames or the way they were dressed. I wish I wasn’t like that.

• In this day of microscopic spy gizmos, did the microphones really need to be so big and clunky? They looked the amplifier anchor Roger Daltry swung around during The Who’s 1969 performance at Woodstock.

• If either of the candidates had dropped their microphone, it’s all we would have remembered. I was hoping one of them would.

• I respect John McCain’s service and think he’d have made a dandy president in 2000 when George Bush dirty tricked it out of him. But he’s starting to remind me of Grandpa Simpson.

• I was glad to see neither of them had suspicious bulges between their shoulder blades the way Bush did against John Kerry in 2004 (simply Google “Bush, bulge, debate”). To me, it’s one of the great underreported stories of the Bush era. Well, that and the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

• One of the greatest lines in debate history came when Lloyd Bensen left Dan Quayle sputtering after he’d blasted him with his great line, “Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. You’re no Jack Kennedy.” When I was doing a golf book about hole in ones, Quayle was one of the few politicians or celebrities to call me back for a chat about their ace history. We talked about golf and luck for 30 casual minutes. He was cool to me. I wonder if Jack Kennedy would have been. Who knows? When it comes to golf chat, maybe Jack Kennedy was no Dan Quayle.

• They say that 10 percent or so of the electorate is still undecided. Who are these marshmallow heads? I say we nullify their votes and get all the partisans who are stubbornly Obama together with the people who are stubbornly McCain and just let them duke it out.