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The question Tuesday
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at via e-mail.
At long last, it's almost over. Or maybe it isn't. Next door in Ohio, thanks to recent registration drives, "we have four counties where you have more voters registered than you have 18 and over population," explains Bob Taft, governor of the Buckeye State.
My favorite part of the campaign was when John Kerry's 17-vehicle campaign caravan stopped at a Wendy's in Newburgh, N.Y., an economically depressed little town with fives times more murders per capita than New York City.
It's lucky they all weren't killed. But it was the 27th wedding anniversary of Elizabeth and John Edwards, and as she explained at the Democrats' convention, they always celebrate their anniversaries at Wendy's because that's where they dined on their first anniversary -- back when they weren't yet part of the uppermost slice of the "two Americas."
For this anniversary, their entourage included Ben Affleck, John and Teresa Heinz Kerry, George Stephanopoulos, Tom Brokaw and eight dozen or so other members of the media. With gusto, Edwards and Kerry approached a table of Marines, with Kerry asking, "Where are you guys serving?"
The response, as reported by The Washington Post, was less than lukewarm: "Their answers were clipped. Later, the Marines -- none of whom would give his name -- said they were Bush supporters. 'He imposed on us and I disagree with him coming over here shaking our hands,' one said. 'I'm 100 percent against Kerry,' he said. 'We support our commander in chief 100 percent.'"
Back at the counter, Elizabeth ordered a Classic Single Combo with mustard and onion, no cheese, and a Diet Coke. Teresa, according to reports, pointed to the picture of the bowl of chili above the clerk's head and said, "What's that?"
He explained that it was something called chili, and she said she'd give it a whirl. After a few stabs at the fast-food version of tomato sauce, chili powder, ground meat and beans, the bowl went uneaten and everyone poured back on the buses and headed for the Newburgh Yacht Club to pick up a five-star order that had been placed prior to the stop at Wendy's: grilled diver sea scallops, prosciutto-wrapped stuffed chicken, filet mignon salad and shrimp vindaloo.
That's how it goes, in things big and small, from staging hoi polloi lunches with the local proletariat to showing you're tough enough to knock the crap out of Islamofascism by bagging a poor goose or tailhooking in a snazzy flight suit onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
It's like H.L. Mencken said of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House back yard."
Meanwhile, the federal government is once again poised to crash through its "debt ceiling," with Congress ready yet again to authorize another raising of the roof so the red ink can continue to flow at the rate of over a billion dollars a day, while the war in Iraq is succeeding in doing a better job of dividing Americans than killing terrorists, and is more costly in American blood and treasure with each passing hour.
The question Tuesday is not whether we're in trouble. We are. We're in the spot of a guy who's maxed out his credit cards and is being chased down by a gang of fanatic killers. The only issue is whether Kerry can do a better job.
For Taki Theodoracopulos, co-editor of The American Conservative, it's not such an easy question: "On one side lurks the hoary beast of a decent man brought down by the neocons and their agenda for world domination. On the other churns the vortex of a man who is right on nothing and is willing to betray anyone in order to achieve recognition and high office."
Either way, split as we are, our job after this election will be to see that we're more than two bickering tribes -- and that we've got some serious work to do, together.
