The Perils of Early Voting

There was a more-than-even chance that I'd be out of town on election day, so I thought I'd try the early voting...

"Hello, Hawkins County."
"Yes, I normally vote at the Armory on 11W, and I want to vote early. Should I go there?"
"Well, you could, but there probably won't be anybody there."
"Do you know where I'm supposed to go?"
"I think you should go to the Masonic Lodge."
"Thanks! Do you know where that is?"
"Yes"
[pause]
"Where is it located?"
"Right across from the Mountaineer Restaurant there's a left turn. Take it and go about a half-mile until you see a sign for the Masonic Lodge Hall."
"Thanks. One last thing."
"Yes?"
"Will there be anybody there?"
"Yes - early voting ends Thursday, so there should be people there."

So I went.

While driving along through gorgeous fall foliage [we're just about at peak colors], I thought about the 2000 election. We lived outside of Jacksonville then, but I was doing an interim assignment in West Palm Beach.

Yes, that's right: I was in West Palm Beach during the 2000 election - the whole Bush v. Gore U.S. Supreme Court case and everything. There was no early voting that I knew of, and I could not get an absentee ballot in time, so I missed the election entirely. That was the only presidential election I've missed since I began voting in 1972 (and voted for McGovern). And it was the one that counted.

If I had voted, we'd have President Gore now. I might be wrong on that one, but it would take a lot of talk to convince me.

So, as I motored past Mount Carmel, Tennessee into Church Hill, Tennessee to find the Masonic Lodge, I resolved that nothing, NOTHING would keep me from voting today.

I almost ran out of gas - but saw the gauge just in time, bouncing below E. Thank God! I stopped and filled up.

I made a wrong turn at the Mountaineer Restaurant, but figured that out and found the Masonic Lodge. The parking lot had a dozen cars in it.

Such a contrast to 2000! On election day in 2000, I was in a nasty, crime-ridden neighborhood in W. Palm. My office was in a windowless room in an old hospital that was losing $2 million a month. Constant traffic passed in front of the building. The neighborhood was muchly prostitutes, crack houses, and many people for whom English was a second language - a distant second. The poor, served by this hospital, would sometimes beg outside, and curse loudly at people who did not give them money.

Now here I was at the Masonic Lodge in Church Hill. Nonwhite people are not regarded with suspicion at all - because there almost aren't any to regard. While our local Hispanic population is growing steadlily, this area is by far the most overwhelmingly white place I've ever lived.

It was an overcast, drizzly day, but the leaves are spectacular. The gloom makes the golds and reds luminescent. Glorious. I went in, my voter registration card in hand, ready for a fight to exercise my right to vote, and vote early. [In Chicago they used to say vote early and vote often. Well, here you can do at least one...]

There was a line! People remarked that this early turnout was much greater than the regular turnout in the past two elections. They expected to be very, very busy on election day. This despite the fact that the area is overwhelmingly Republican, and Tennessee is not a battleground state. My vote would thus be largely irrelevant, as a practical matter. I've been reminded of that many times.

They took my card and did not request a photo ID. I was given a computer-generated form to sign. I walked over to the three voting machines and gave the form to a nice man who looked at it.

"Do you know Ray Lewis?" he said.
I thought, this is a trick question, designed to deprive me of my constitutional franchise. If I said no, then he would not let me vote. So, warily, I said, "Sure do." It was a lie. I KNEW it was a lie. Could he tell of my fakery?

"Great guy, isn't he?"
"The best."

I quickly circled around him and went to one of the voting booths. I was faced with lights and buttons. The lights and buttons did not line up exactly with the names and offices.

"Do you have any questions?"
"What?"
"I said, do you have any questions about voting?"
I thought, so this is it. He's trying to tell me that, if I don't know whom to vote for, he'll do it for me. Bastard!
"Uhhh, no, everything's OK."
"All right."

Miserable SOB - trying to tell me how to vote. So, OK, "John Kerry, Democrat, President of the United States/John Edwards, Vice President, United States." Push - light goes on - great! Those people in Florida should only wish it's this easy, huh?

Now, Tennessee State Senate. Well, since I just voted Democratic for the President, I want a Democrat for the State Senate. Push - light goes on - great!

Now, Tennessee House of Representatives. "Republican" or "Write in." So THAT's how they do it - deny the Democrats a spot on the ballot via some Central American jerrymandering of the Democratic presence. Well, that won't work! Push "Write In."

Now several lights start blinking rhythmically. What to do? Ask that guy who knows Ray Lewis? No. Can't do that. Would be an admission of defeat, like stopping for directions on the road. What if he tells Ray over beers, and I'm the laughingstock of the neighborhood?? Should I just keep pushing buttons until something happens...?

Ah, here's a button way down on the left: "WRITE IN." Push - door opens - paper appears. Great!

But no pen! I look around - no pen. So THAT's how they do it - say that there's a write-in option but deny the vote to penless Democrats. And I should ask this Ray Lewis-lover for one? No way!

I look around and find one. I uncap it and start writing. The paper is like thermal paper and too slick for the ball to start rolling and the ink to start flowing. So THAT's how they do it - furnish crappy pens to write in disappearing ink on flimsy trick paper...

Luckily, there are more pens. I take another one and it works OK. But by now the thin thermal paper is a little scrunched up. I write, JOHN BERNAT in big block letters.

Now what? Ask Ray Lewis's covert operative for help?? No way. A large white button at the bottom says, "Finish Voting - do NOT push until complete."

Well, in life, when is anything truly complete??

Enough monkey business. I push it and an LCD display says, 'THANK U'

"Thank U." Typical East Tennessee.

But the final insult remained. As I left, I asked Ray Lewis' illicit lover for an "I voted" sticker. He said, "You'll have to ask Jerry over there." So I went to Jerry. Jerry was the guy who thought he'd have to look me up in the computer printouts but did not have to.

Jerry said, "They didn't give us the 'I voted' stickers for early voting."

Bastards!

So THAT's how they would contrive to undermine the integrity of this election...how would Lynne know that I really voted today????

God Help Us All, I've Decided

After much thought and needless deley, I've decided to vote for John Kerry.

I promised myself to wait until after the debates before making a final commitment, and the debates did it for me. Kerry's mah man.

Here are the why's, wherefores and needless equivocations:

1. He's a military veteran who hesitates to spill American blood unless we're sure why.
2. WHERE does he get his hair done? MUCH better than GW.
3. A guy who changes his mind too much is better than a guy who doesn't know when it's time to change it.
4. He sounded less aphasic than Bush during the debates.
5. Bush looked and sounded annoyed to be debating; the POTUS should never forget his obligation to defend his ideas before the people. It's his job, not an annoyance.
6. Kerry's taller.
7. Reagan started this crap: "Are you better off now than four years ago?" Hell, no...but I guess that's personal.
8. Bush won't admit mistakes, and that's deadly in any leader. During the "town hall" format he was asked to name three mistakes he made, and he boffed the question. Then only one he could think of was something about one or more of his appointments, which he refused to discuss due to confidentiality. A great leader admits when he's wrong. John Maxwell defined a leader as the guy in the forest who skinnies up the tallest tree, looks around and hollers down to his people, "WRONG FOREST." GW and Lyndon Johnson share too much in common regarding staying committed to a losing overseas war.
9. Bush is shorter.
10. Kerry at least acknowledges that health care in the US is in a mess. It's worse now than it's ever been, and getting still worse. I heard Bush say that our system works better than, say, the Swedish system or some such. He's dead wrong on the facts. Perhaps it works better for him personally (I happened to see his private hospital care unit when I taught at Bethesda). Not for me, though, or almost anyone else I know - AND I WORKED IN HEALTH CARE FOR 24 YEARS!!

So, anybody who pees in my ear and tells me it's raining cannot get my vote.

Whew - it sure took long enough. God bless America!

Town Hall Blues

The Town Hall Debate - October 9, 2004 New York Times

Town hall meetings are one vestige of early American democracy that modern presidential candidates know very well. No one who has survived a New Hampshire primary season needs to be told what it's like to answer questions tossed out by a group of average citizens. It's the democratic process in its most amiable state: earnest Americans asking serious questions about the issues.

Last night's format was much more suited to George Bush's talents than the hard-edged debate last week, but John Kerry still managed to goad him to irritable near-shouting at some points.
One of the uncommitted voters in the audience sensibly asked President Bush to name three mistakes he'd made in office, and what he had done to remedy the damage. Mr. Bush declined to list even one, and instead launched into an impassioned defense of the invasion of Iraq as a good idea.

The president's insistence on defending his decision to go into Iraq seemed increasingly bizarre in a week when his own investigators reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction there, and when his own secretary of defense acknowledged that there was no serious evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

Even worse, the president's refusal to come up with even a minor error - apart from saying that he might have made some unspecified appointments that he now regretted - underscores his inability to respond to failure in any way except by insisting over and over again that his original
decision was right.

Unfortunately, for long stretches of the evening, the format did not lead to such telling responses. On occasion, the arguments were impossible to follow. Heaven help any citizen who relied on last night's debate to understand what is going on with North Korea or who tried to understand the fight about tax cuts on Subchapter S corporations.

Mr. Bush was deeply unpersuasive when asked why he had not permitted the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. He claimed that the reason was "I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you." Mr. Kerry cleanly retorted that four years ago in a campaign debate, Mr. Bush had said importing medicine from Canada sounded sensible. And the president was utterly incoherent when asked about whom he might name to the Supreme Court in a second term.

His comment about how he didn't want to offend any judges because he wanted "them all voting for me" was a joke - but an unfortunate one, given the fact that the president owes his job to a Supreme Court vote.

Mr. Kerry was weaker when he had to respond to a woman who wanted to know about spending federal money on abortions.

Social issues seem to bring out the senator's worst tendencies to paint a word picture in shades of gray and equivocation. Both men seemed overly defensive at times, as if they were
fighting shadow opponents that were not even in the hall. Mr. Kerry seemed intent, without much prompting by Mr. Bush, on countering the attack ads run by the president's campaign and by other Republican organizations. Mr. Bush sometimes seemed as if he was trying to make up for his weak performance in Debate No. 1.

Mr. Kerry demonstrated, at the very minimum, a stature that was equal to the president's. If Mr. Bush was hoping to recover all the ground he lost last week, he failed in his mission.
The president seemed to fall back frequently on name-calling, denouncing his opponent as a liberal and a tool of the trial lawyers. "The president's just trying to scare," Mr. Kerry said. It will be another few weeks before we see how well that works.

Yeah...THAT'S The Ticket!

Sense and Sensibility
October 2, 2004 By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times

In weak moments, I think the best ticket for this country would be Bush-Kerry. The two men balance each other out so well.

Kerry can't make a decision; Bush makes them too quickly.

Kerry changes his mind by the month; Bush almost never changes his mind.

Kerry thinks obsessively about process questions, but can't seem to come up with a core conviction; Bush is great at coming up with clear goals, but is not so great about coming up with the process to get there.

That was the striking thing about the debate on Thursday night. It wasn't so much a clash of ideologies, or a clash of cultures. It was a clash of two different sorts of minds. You could say it was a hedgehog (Bush) debating a fox (Kerry), if you want to use that tired but handy formulation. But I think you'd be getting closer to the truth if you put it this way: The atmosphere of Kerry'smind is rationalistic. He thinks about how to get things done. He talks like a manager or an engineer. The atmosphere of Bush's mind is more creedal or ethical. He talks about moral challenges. He talks about the sort of personal and national character we need in order to triumph over our enemies. His mind is less coldly secular than Kerry's, but also more abstracted from day-to-day reality.

When John Kerry was asked how he would prevent anotherattack like 9/11, he reeled off a list of nine concrete policy areas, ranging from intelligence reform to training Iraqi troops, but his answer had no thematic summation. If you glance down a transcript of the debate and you see one set of answers that talks about "logistical capacity" or "a plan that I've laid out in four points," or "a long list"of proposals or "a strict series of things" that need to be done, you know that's Kerry speaking.

If, on the other hand, you see an answer that says, "When we give our word, we will keep our word," you know that is Bush. When you see someone talking about crying with a war widow, you know that's Bush.

These contrasting casts of mind influence how the two men see the world - for example, how they define the enemy. On Thursday night, Bush defined the war on terror as a broad moral and ideological struggle. He said, "We have a solemn duty to defeat this ideology of hate." Bush believes that Iraq is a crucial battlefield in the war because a free Iraq will be a rebuttal to radical Islam right in the heart of the Arab world. Kerry, on the other hand, defined the enemy in narrow, concrete terms. He emphasized that it was Osama bin Laden who attacked us. He emphasized the need to defeat Al Qaeda's network. He called Iraq a diversion from defeating that network. Each cast of mind comes with its own strengths andweaknesses. The mechanically minded Kerry is much better attalking about realities like securing the Iraqi border. On the other hand, he is unable to blend his specific proposals into guiding principles. That's why he's been fuzzy about the big things over the entire course of his career. That's why he has changed his mind on big issues with such astonishing rapidity. That's why he gets twisted into pretzels, like vowing to continue fighting the Iraq war, which he says was a mistake to begin.

Bush, by contrast, is steadfast and resolute. But his weakness is statecraft. That is the task of relating means to ends, of orchestrating the institutions of government to achieve your desired goals. Bush sometimes acts as if it's enough for a president to profess his faith. But a coach can't just dream up a game plan. He has to understand what his specific players can and can't do, and adapt to those realities. Bush launched a pre-emptive war even though his intelligence community was incompetent. He occupied a country even though he didn't really believe in, or work with, the institutions of government he would need to complete the task.

Nonetheless, I suspect that the reason Bush's approval ratings hover around 50 percent, despite a year of carnage in Iraq, is because of the reason many of us in the commentariat don't like to talk about: in a faithful and moralistic nation, Bush's language has a resonance with people who know that he is not always competent, and who know that he doesn't always dominate every argument, but who can sense a shared cast of mind.