By now, I had hoped it would all be over, that we would have a winner chosen and we could all return to normalcy, and I could be writing about something else.
This weekend, I got a totally different view of it all when I had dinner with my older son, Clay, who has an entirely different take on politics. Whereas Tony and I are political junkies, Clay is an auto guy and couldn’t care less about politics. As far as he’s concerned, it’s nothing more than a contact sport, played by and for a bunch of political junkies, purely for their own amusement. No matter which of the two contenders wins, it has almost zero impact on his life, despite what we like to believe.
I, of course, immediately launched into a defense of the democratic system, the importance of our votes and how the winner changes the course of the country and our history. Finally, we agreed just to disagree, which is the way we always end this argument.
Later, when I got home, I began to think about what he said. We, as partisans, like to believe that it’s life or death; that the choice of the other guy is disaster. That belief powers our drive to win. But is it really true?
When I look at Bush and Gore, what strikes me is not how they’re different, but really, how similar they both are in background, temperament, and right down to the same suits they both seem to wear. They’re both the scions of political families and they’ve both, after some minor early year rebellion, decided to settle down and go into the family business, which is politics. They both come from wealth, privilege and power, and, despite all their commercials about coming up the hard way and all the photo ops portraying them as the Marlboro man, they’re both pretty urbane, citified characters, no matter what they pretend.
On the positive side, it’s not easy to be “the son of.” I’ve known a number of “sons of” who were scarred for life and ended up in the bottom of a bottle. They never knew who they were, nor did they every have a real opportunity to find out, or to test their metal. For all the helping hands “sons of” get, there are distinct downsides. For one thing, they are not allowed to fail, so they are always unsure if their success is their own, or their daddy’s success, once removed. They also have problems knowing whom to trust because people may be using them for their name, their entourage, whatever.
Both Bush and Gore seem to have almost overcome being “sons of,” but I think one of the things we all feel about both of them is, they’re not fully formed yet.
The presidency is a funny place to finish your twelfth step, but I think we have two contenders who are both equally in transition. The question is, will the office make the man?
If their backgrounds are similar, how about their policies? Of course they’re different. One’s a moderate Democrat and the other a compassionate conservative. But does that make that much difference?
Would either man fire Alan Greenspan and risk the impact on the stock markets? Unlikely.
The Republicans are talking about a big tax cut. Sounds nice, but watch how all the ultra-conservative Republican money manager types feel about dumping all that money into the economy and possibly kicking up another inflationary cycle.
The Democrats want to include prescription drugs in Medicare. Nice sound bite, but the impact on HMOs, which are already in big trouble, could be disastrous. Many of them are losing money now, and already getting out one of the senior care business.
Everyone agrees we need to fix Medicare, but the solution, which is raising the entry age and raising the rates, is equally unattractive to either guy. I can’t imagine either one voluntarily stepping off that cliff.
Finally, I say: Well, they’re different on the environment, but Ralph Nader doesn’t seem to think so. Despite the fact the Democrats are now mad at Saint Ralph, if he was right all those other years, how come he’s so wrong now?
And probably, most important, we, when it’s all added up, just spent $3 billion on this past election. People may give you $100, or even $500, without expecting much more than a thank you. But for $3 billion, they expect a return on their investment other than good clean government. So, the way I do the arithmetic, if they put up the money, a return of $6 billion would merely be a push in a 50/50 situation, which is what politics is today. A reasonable return on that investment is more like $9 billion or $12 billion. I suspect the Democratic arithmetic is exactly the same as the Republican arithmetic, so maybe Clay isn’t so wrong after all.
Nah!