Finally, the Day AFTER the Election

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Two happy things happened in the past two weeks: Chicago Public Radio ended their *@!#*! ten day fund raising drive, and all of the campaign ads, loaded stories and pseudo analysis by candidates ended last night.

There was even a story broadcast from my Mom's home town, Great Falls, MT, this morning. See my other blog, Prompt Ruminations, for details.

'Publicans are mad because they lost the House (big time), and the Senate is close to being lost (Dam'crats picked up four of six necessary Senate seats, at this writing, with Montana and Virginia too close to call).

I have known Jim Webb since college days. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, I in 1969. With only 4,000 students, it is a small college. I remember the Brigade boxing championship, when he lost to another guy in '68: Ollie North, my company commander. I like Webb the person; but I don't like the Reagan Republican SecNav who is now the opportunistic Democrat candidate for the Senate. He's acting too much like a politician.

Overall, I am happy. I agree with Thomas Paine (1737-1809), who said, "That government is best which governs least *." I was therefore somewhat happy with this so-called "do nothing Congress". But I prefer the Congress like this new one: closely balanced, while controlled by the opposite party from the one in the White House.

The election also reminded me of fundamental American strengths. Sure, we are folks who listen to Howard Stern, Madeline Murray O'Hare and (*brrrrr!*) John Kerry. But we also value education, religion and treating children with love and firm guidance. We really are slow to anger. Look how patient the American people have been with the government's failures on bin Laden, health care and tax breaks for millionaires. We all knew that the President wanted to get Saddam because the President's father failed to, and look how patient we've been on that one. We even let a Secretary of Defense repeat the errors of the Vietnam war without our burning down the Pentagon. Yet.

Mind you, I most often vote Republican. But I am quickly becoming more libertarian. With a small "L".

Slow to anger, yes. But, once our dander is up... well, ask the Japanese from the 1940's, the Germans from 1917 or 1945, or Saddam today. Hugo Chavez should take note.

Not that a change of parties is going to be any better. The stereotype of American men is that they refuse to ask for directions, and for American women is that they talk, talk, talk. Well, finally, a woman has risen to be Speaker of the House, and so the House may never adjourn again.

It isn't the change of parties. It is that we once again have a dynamic tension between Congress and the Executive. We tend to get fewer laws that way, a few more American solutions that way, and delightful stalemates on the trivial.

* He also said, "These are the times that try men's souls", and "If we don't hang together, we will surely hang separately."