The Frenzy, the Hue and Cry

Politics has been crazy this last week.  The Rep ticket is tanking and spewing ugly stuff everywhere.  The Dems have been mostly quiet.  Pollls look very strange, with Dems winning 2:1 on an electoral vote count.  Pundits are talking about an 8-seat Dem pickup in the Senate, which is absolutely unheard of.  

Should I be shouting "Hosanna!"?  Not sure.  I am certainly glad that it is likely we'll actually get our health care up to the standard of the rest of the industrialized world.  I'm certainly glad that we'll finish the war in Iraq, and concentrate on Al Quaeda instead.  I'm certainly glad that there will likely be improved tax policy for most of America.  

But our national political life is larger than that.  It includes things like truth, common sense, transparency, and courtesy.  And that is whithering under the hot Republican lights of this election.

I'll give just to for-instances.  I'm very good friends with 2 very intelligent conservative women with whom I discuss politics from time to time.  From one, I received a note about a special that Sean Hannity is going to run tonight about Obama.  Sean Hannity is no source of truth, common sense, or courtesy.  From the other, I received an email where she notes that she hopes Obama is no longer a Muslim.  Obama was never a Muslim - his mother sent him to a Muslim school when he was a kid because it was the best school in the neighborhood.  She also made him go to Catholic church for Easter and Christmas, and they celebrated Jewish holidays, too.  

I love both of these women.  Both have been very kind to me.  Both are very smart.  Both have still been tricked by the lies and distortions coming from the political right.  Judging from news reports of McCain supporters yelling "Terrorist!" this week at rallies, references to William Ayers in every stump speech, and this new Hannity piece, it won't stop any time soon.  Our civil discourse is disrupted.

Obama has made a concerted effort to run a high ground campaign.  The Rep ticket is just as vulnerable on guilt-by-association as he is.  But he's not running on that.  He's running on the issues.  Obama and his advisors and campaign staff are not trying to maximize McCain's connections to Keating, Hagee, or his lobbyist-heavy campaign staff.  Nor do they point out Palin's husband's DUI, pregnant daughter, witchcraft-hunting pastor or failed record in Wasilla.  

I can only hope that after the emotions of the election have worn off (maybe early January) and we're all used to the idea that the next 4 years are going to be very different from the last 28 years, we'll see both sides and their surrogates come to common sense.  We must work to build together, not tear down.  The contest for our nation's future can not be won by one side destroying the other.  If an election is won that way, the winner loses its honor.  The other only loses the election.