44

Yes we did.

Walt Whitman, 1884, A Poem for Election Day (excerpt):

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon’s white cones - nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi’s stream:

This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name - the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day,

Updated: Our polling place had a slight line and reported that from 7 until 8 there was much more of a line.

I was, as my British friends might say, gobsmacked, when I heard that the son of conservative icon William F. Buckley, Christopher Buckley, endorsed and plans to vote for Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.

Well, it’s true, I’ve always said I have no problems with honest conservatives, being one half the time myself. Honest discussion and even disagreement about issues is one thing; false accusations against character are quite another.

You can read his whole explanation behind his decision on his site, the Daily Beast.  Below I’ve excerpted some of the most salient points:

My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

I came across these photos this weekend and just felt like sharing.

I really like this one, taken moments before the debate began on Friday. The quiet confidence, the last minute deep breath and getting centered reminds me of how I approach big challenges.

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Here we see the next first couple, right after Friday’s debate. I know from experience that a strong marriage is a major factor in having a positive world view.

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These next two photos were taken during a recent Obama appearance:

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Pictures from Obama’s flickr site and used with permission.

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, his doctor struck up a conversation.

Eventually the topic got around to current affairs.

The old rancher said, “Well, ya know, let me tell you about the ‘Post Turtle’.”

The doctor said “What’s a ‘Post Turtle’ ?”

The old rancher said, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘Post Turtle’.”

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor’s face so he continued to explain. “You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she don’t belong up there, she don’t know what to do while she’s up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with.”