The Election Word of 2012

Every presidential election season generates its own special buzzword. It's a word that comes out of nowhere, maybe by the pen of some unknown reporter who, working late through the night, sees it fluttering mothlike in the light of his lamp among countless lesser phrases and makes a snatch for it, stabbing it on his pen tip, as the perfect expression of his thoughts. So perfect, this phrase, in describing the political atmosphere, the field, the best of a candidate, the worst, or whatever the particular flavor of that particular race, that soon it's repeated in other articles, on cable news networks and talk radio, by the candidates themselves...it has become THE WORD.

It's a word common enough for most people to immediately understand in context, more or less, but unusual enough that no one had ever before used it on a regular basis. It begins to leap out each time it appears, a florescent marker flagging the extent of political punditry's shared consciousness.

In 2004, the year of Bush’s stand against Kerry, it was gravitas. As in, “Kerry has gravitas, but no charisma,” or “John Edwards needs to show more gravitas,” or “Bush has no gravitas whatsoever.”

Remember? It’s when we as a nation were craving seriousness and respectability in a leader. Somehow it seems like we were a lot more mature back then.

In 2008, the year of Obama's extended fight with Hillary and (seemingly) dozens of GOP candidates' fight with each other, it was throw under a bus. I suppose it shows what a catty tooth-and-nail campaign it was for both parties that THE WORD...or well, I suppose in this case a phrase...was one that represented blind ambition.

Thankfully, I can no longer quote an actual quote containing "throw under a bus." I was so sick of hearing that phrase, I think my brain purged all memories of it. I DO remember saying, "Stop saying that! There is no bus! There never WAS a bus! LEAVE THE BUSES OUT OF IT!"

Ladies and gentleman, for this election season, the campaign for President of the United States in the Year of Our Lord 2012, I am pleased to announce that the official WORD has finally made itself known.

feckless

Every candidate has been called this at least once, often by another candidate. It has now appeared in the mediums of newsprint, magazine, and television. "Feckless" it is. As words go, it's not nearly as irritating as "throw under a bus" or "gravitas," but it's still a little disturbing that it's neither a course of action nor a virtue. Yes, the word of the year is an insult, and one meaning "lack of vitality" at that.

Is it a reflection of our feeling about our nation as a whole? Do we cringe away from the very weaknesses that we fear to find in ourselves? Does it reflect four years of losing footing on the global economic stage, the loss of faith in our military focus, our inability to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps? How much significance should we attach to a word that rises from our collective subconscious, a word reoccurring, like a mantra, in our popular dialogue?

Personally I was hoping for "widdershins," but I guess there's always the next election.

Raucous Caucus Debacus!

Last night I went to my first-ever caucus. As an observer. My home state has regular old boring ballot boxes, and since I happened to be in a caucus state, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

I somehow imagined people sitting around a living room with glasses of port and trays of modest, homebaked cookies, reclining with neighborly good-humor while debating the merits of each candidate. When I learned it was to be held in the local high school instead, my mental image changed to a standing-room only crowd holding high-decibel heated arguments and spitting when an enemy candidate's name was mentioned.

Raucous caucus! Heck yeah!

No.

It was neither raucous nor...Well, it was a caucus, so it had that going for it. We all sat around clustered into precincts while the invocation was given, stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance, then listened as mild yet convicted citizens rose to endorse each candidate one by one, thusly.

What Each Candidate Has Going For Him:
Ron Paul - National defense, stop policing the world, get gov't off our backs
Rick Santorum - Walks the walk, a good guy
Newt Gingrich - Knows how to get things done in Washington
Mitt Romney - Most likely to win (which, in a way, means, "he'll get the votes of moderates," which, in a way, means, "he's the candidate least like a true Republican," but it wasn't quite spelled out like that)

Everyone was extremely civil, referring to Obama as "the current President," which I thought was rather nice considering the acridity that's been plaguing the primaries.

My first thought about the caucus was, "Wow, this is fantastic." A chance to meet neighbors for the first time, a place where politics can be discussed openly and unabashedly. In a ballot box state such as mine, you can conceal your party alignment forever, if you want. There's never a need to tell anyone if you're a Republican or Democrat, and most people are too polite to ask.

But here there are no secrets. You see who's with you; you see your local party more or less in its entirety. There's something old fashioned and wholesome about it, something that stirs up ideas of town hall meetings and patriot pioneers gathering underneath shade trees to debate the topics of the day. Suddenly voting isn't a lonely slip of paper, but democracy at its finest, a chance to sit shoulder to should and divide opinions before reuniting as one community. It made me feel involved, even though I was just an observer.

My second thought was, "Holy cow, all of these people are crazy-go-bats." Many parts of the night felt as though they were scripted by a comedian trying to poke fun at every Republican stereotype under the sun. There were people dressed in tricorn hats and red colonial uniforms. There was the celebrating a local candidate for the fact that she loved her guns (this raised many cheers.) There was the (joking?) reference to the fact that our country might not exist in another two months thanks to the current president. And there was the overwhelming assumption that everyone in the room was completely on the same page, a true-blue dyed-in-the-wool Republican walking lock step with all of the party's flagship issues.

Not so much.

There's something inherently wrong, I think, with the mentality of, "I don't care who our nominee is, so long as he beats the current president." Democrats are just as guilty of this as Republicans. Such a statement is a declaration of narrow-mindedness. To assume that the incumbent represents the worst of all possible candidates is a prejudice that would be heartily tested if one of the Republican B-listers somehow made it to November. I might buy, "Any of the four current nominees would be better," if this mantra hadn't already been initiated three years ago, long before there were any Newts or Mitts or Ricks to attach to the abstract.

Uncomfortable as the uber-Republicanniness made me, I realized that I would have been just as repulsed by its equivalent Democratic counterpart. I feel liberal when I'm with conservatives, conservative when I'm with liberals.

This made me feel better. This is why I am a moderate. This is why I detest labels and pigeonholes, and would be perfectly happy (except for not getting to vote in primaries) if I was not attached to any party whatsoever.

Or as one speaker last night described it, "a person who refuses to take a stand."

Hmm.

Big Name Comes, Small Town Fawns

Well, it finally happened. The Democratic primary has grown so rampantly out of control that they've gotten desperate, so desperate that they're even campaigning on the Oregon Coast.

But we haven't reached the level of the actual candidates yet. We're only on "spouse level."

Still, it was pretty exciting to hear that Bill Clinton was coming. Has a president current or ex ever visited the coast before? Not in my lifetime. The closest thing was when JFK campaigned here 40 years ago, a fact a learned from the woman standing in front of me in line as we waited to see Clinton. She had also seen JFK. She had been in high school.

The rally, or whatever you want to call it, was a mellow event. A week of raining had finally given way to mild and breezy spring weather, so we coastal type folks were in a merry mood, chatting to each other as we stood in a line that stretched for blocks. Everyone knew everyone. I had driven down from my hometown, but amazingly even I came across a few people that I knew. After about an hour and a half of waiting, they opened up the doors to the middle school gym, and we packed right on in. Amazingly, there was no security check of any kind. Most folks opted for the bleachers, but I choose the floor, so that when Clinton finally came out (on time!!) I was standing only 20 feet from him.

Bill Clinton is remarkably charismatic in person, very easy and relaxed as he speaks. But our crowd was judicious, and there was definitely rationing of applause for only the agreeable points of his speech. I, for my part, was very clappy about the part where Clinton promised more wilderness area designations for Oregon - we fall far short of the acreage of neighboring states - but this is not a welcomed idea for a community build on timber dollars, and so the rest of the gym stayed awkwardly silent. Other clunkers included his proposition that the future of transportation lies with lithium - I think - battery powered cars, ("They're too expensive!!" shouted one woman behind me) and that the lithium -or whatever it was - lies in great abundance in the ground of South America. (And so we are supposed to go dig up the rainforest? Hello?)

Also lacking was his understanding of our Northwest salmon situation, a problem he summed up in a way that very much implied he had been briefed on the plane ride over. "More salmon for everyone!" he said, or something close to it. His analysis of the issue was based along the premise that there are so many salmon just a'swimming on out there in the Pacific, and it's a fight between Alaskan fisherman and Northwestern fisherman to see who can go haul them in, as in, "stop letting Alaska get all the salmon and give them back to Oregon."

Which might work if salmon were whales, or if salmon were oil reserves, or if salmon were stock options. But salmon are salmon, and with a very few exceptions (i.e. ocean dead zones) if you find your local fishery depleted, you can only point the finger at yourself. So when Clinton started with his garbled notion of problem/solution, I wanted to yell, "Get a job!" Or, no, what would the phrase be? "Get a fisheries education or at least a rudimentary grasp on things that every third grader in Oregon already knows!"

Oh well. I suppose it's too much to ask for our local problems to go on the national scene anyway.

Clinton's best moment of the night was the announcement that Hillary would end No Child Left Behind, a line that filled the gym with wild cheering and applause. He followed this by saying, "That's a sure fire winner. I could be in the middle of Idaho 400 miles from the nearest Democrat and get applause from a herd of elk with that one."

After the speech, he came down into the crowd for hand-shaking and signature-signing, and the gym turned into a gigantic mosh pit. With me in the middle. So I got to know some of my South Coast neighbors a little bit more on that day, and isn't that what democracy is all about? Coming together?

Here is a picture of da man:



And here is proof that I was actually there. Or my eye was there, anyway. You have no idea how awkward it was to turn around to take a picture of myself when everyone behind me was so fixated on that big ol' flag. They thought I was a wee bit odd... because I broke eye contact with Clinton - aaaAAAAA!


And I had a warm and fuzzy video to upload, but since Blogger is being dumb about it, I'll have to try to post it later.
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The Daily Gripe

I guess it's a sign that I'm getting old when I start my day by scoffing at the newspaper. Here are the latest things to push my buttons:

1. McCain's idea of the economy. I was happily working in the kitchen the other day, listening to an NPR interview, when it suddenly occurred to me that McCain was repeating the same thing over and over again with only the slightest variation in phrasing. His solution to our current predicament is to A) eliminate unnecessary earmarks and B) lower taxes. This is all fine and noble and good, but I desperately wanted to ask - So, we make our government run at maximum efficiency and we give the citizens more money in their pocket. Then what? The government still needs money to run, especially if McCain wants to keep this war going, and where does the money come from? Right now, we're borrowing heavily from China. Wouldn't it be a lesser evil to tax the snot out of ourselves rather than borrow from another country? And if everyone has more money in their pockets, they will most likely go out and spend it on cheap goods, ie ones coming from outside the country. So we end up borrowing more and increasing our trade deficit further. This is a solution?

Any time I hear McCain say "earmarks" I want to slap the TV/radio/newspaper. The two he frequently cites are the "Bridge to Nowhere" and the DNA study on grizzly bears, which he laughs at as being a paternity suit. The "Bridge to Nowhere," if I'm not mistaken, was a scuttled project to built a bridge between Ketchikan and its island airport. I've ridden the ferry to that island several times, and it's not so bad. A bridge is probably unnecessary, but certainly not unreasonable, especially after you've hauled luggage up and down the ramp to the ferry a few times. As for the DNA study, a bunch of scientists quickly jumped up and said, hey, the grizzly is nearly extinct in the Lower 48 and that study contributed a lot to conservation efforts. (It sounds very much like a study I might have worked on, had things gone differently.) So McCain is off base on both counts.

2. The border fence. Stupidest idea ever. The entire time I've heard people talking about it, I keep asking, "What about the wildlife?" It reminds me of a conference I went to in Belize on the Central American Wildlife Corridor (now called the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor), a cooperative effort between all the countries in Central America to preserve an unbroken strip of wild lands from north to south to allow for the traditional migration of wildlife. The meeting brought together people of all stripes, from researchers to farmers, to try to create this unbroken corridor, and the very act of trying was itself a great source of pride.

The first time I heard about a border fence, I thought about this corridor. Any fence big enough to stop people would stop...pretty much everything else. I've seen coverage about how the fence would affect ranchers (cut them off from their water supply) and towns (cut buildings off from the town), but nothing on wildlife.

Finally, finally yesterday in the paper there was an article on the wildlife. Thank you! And yes, it turns out that the fence would be so disastrous that it would endanger much of the wildlife, and in one instance probably cause the extinction of a rare sub-species of pronghorn. Many of the scientists who work in that area are promising that they will physically lay down in the path of the fence if they try to build it. President Bush, in all his great wisdom, has already granted environmental waivers to the agency building the fence (Homeland Security, or Border Patrol, or something, I forget.) But out of the goodness of their hearts, the agency has offered to pay Fish and Wildlife $800,000 to mitigate the damages.

So, will the F&W use that $800,000 to helicopter the pronghorn back and forth across the fence? Maybe they could use it to cryogenically freeze all the wildlife for a time when there aren't any more fences.

3. Ethanol, the biggest scam of our generation, and yes, I am getting momentum from the recent Time Magazine issue that pretty much said the same thing. But it's much worse than I thought. On the surface, ethanol is just barely more efficient than gasoline, but that's before you factor in the land, water, and fertilizer needed to produce it. On the fertilizer issue, the increased crops of corn in the Midwest have resulted in an increase in fertilizer being washed down the Mississippi, which in turn has caused a widening dead zone in the Gulf that is putting fishermen out of business. On the land issue, many US farmers are switching from soybeans to corn, which increases the soybean demand, which is being answered by South American (mainly Brazil), which has to clear out more rainforest to convert the land to farming. So by using ethanol, we are essentially killing the ocean and the rainforest. Green!

While we're all in a huff trying to fill our gas tanks, much of the world is struggling to fill their stomachs. One tank's worth of ethanol equals enough corn to feed one person for a year. I suppose if we were in dire straights, we could ask, "Do I want to eat for a year, or drive for 400 miles?" What yahoo thought that burning up food for fuel was a good idea to begin with?

Ah, you powerful corn lobby, scourge of dietitians and spawner of conspiracy theories everywhere! I'm referring to conversation I had once upon a time with an oil man I was sitting next to on the plane. We were in Ecuador; he was looking for new oil in the jungle. We started talking corn. He pointed out to me that you hardly ever see corn syrup on the label of foods outside the US. I already knew this. I had learned much earlier that Coke made in the US is sweetened with corn syrup, while in other countries it usually has sugar instead. (I've heard several Coke lovers exclaim, while drinking one abroad, "Hey, this is what it used to taste like!")

But then the oil man insisted that nearly every food in America uses corn syrup, and that I would be hard pressed to find one that didn't. He was right. Nine times out of ten...well, check the label. Is it cheaper? More readily available? Or is the corn lobby an evil entity spun wildly out of control with power? My oil man insisted the latter, and with confidence plainly stated that the reason so many Americans struggle with obesity is because of corn syrup, which is harder for the body to process.

I shrug off that sort of thinking. I'm not one for conspiracy theories anyway. I just don't think people are all that organized. But gradual misguidance, that is something I genuinely fear, and that seems to be where the ethanol debate is right now. Oregon, being a forward-thinking state, has put forth a renewable energy agenda which heavily includes ethanol. (They want to build refineries in the state, shipping in trucks of corn from the Midwest. Intelligent.) Oh...moan...ethanol... And now I can't go to the gas station without tapping into a blend, whether I like it or not.

Ranting...ranting...

Insert happy thought here.

The Big Bad "D"

Considering the big PA primary is tomorrow, this seems like an appropriate time to talk politics again. I was truly hoping that both parties would still be unresolved by the time Oregon got to vote, but I suppose it was too much to ask. The only remaining contender to McCain is Ron Paul, and though his devotees still hang from the freeway overpasses, doggedly waving signs and flags and chucking campaign stickers down at passing traffic in the hopes that something will stick, I'm afraid that he has descended down to the voting tier that includes John the Baptist, Yosemite Sam, and Bullwinkle.

I wish that Oregon had an open primary, because then I could register as an independent and be done with all this partisan hullabaloo. But regrettably, it does not. To make matters worse, now that McCain has the nomination, the Republican ballot is woefully boring, with no major contest and many unchallenged candidates. So I did what any red-blooded American hankering to make a difference would do. I went and re-registered as. . .

(dum dum dum)

I have to confess, I have always, always been a moderate. Not that I'm moderate on every issue, but I side with some of the things each party has to offer and think they're absolute doofuses on other things. Both of them. I've never really seen either one as being better or worse than the other. In fact, if it wasn't already being used by some funky AARP campaign, I would consider this to be my perfect political symbol.



But I come from a long line of Republican kin, so there was certainly a very real risk of being disowned by the family. Plus, I have to admit that I've grown comfortable with the Republican label. It's a bit hard to think that now I am officially a Democrat. But now I can also officially say that I don't hold much stock in either party, and am now proudly bipartisan. One America!

It's amazingly easy to jump parties in Oregon. You can do it again and again to your heart's delight, so long as you get your mind made up a few days before the ballots are mailed out. It is so easy, in fact, that some conservative radio hosts have been lately encouraging Republicans to switch over so that they can cast a vote for Hillary - i.e. sabotage the Democratic chance in November. This, to me, is a despicable mindset, a divisive and pointedly unpatriotic way to go about an election, and anyone who switches for this reason should be strung up by their hanging chads and forced to watch all 30-something presidential debates end to end, including pundit commentary. The very idea irks me so much that when I re-registered, I was sorely tempted to include a note that read, "I am not a saboteur! I am inspired!"

And now I have an interesting ballot in front of me. There are scores of contested races on the Democratic side, and since I've been paying attention only to the presidential race, I have to go do some homework to figure out how to vote for them. I really only switched ships for the sake of the Hillary/Obama contest, so I might just vote on that and nothing else...oh, but...grr, errm...it seems terrible to leave something blank on the ballot. I guess that's left over from college testing days when I had to fill in the little bubbles for the answers, and it was better to fill them all in on a guess than not at all. I suppose it doesn't work that way for democracy.

At least I have one figured out:



Which is not to say that I've made up my mind for November. All candidates get an equal evaluation past the primaries, says I. One election at a time.

Note to the Rest of the World: Please Retain Judgment Until November

While Iowa and New Hampshire jerk the rest of the nation around, leaving behind not front runners, but rather a slew of floundering candidates strewn about the political field like beached whales, the evening news comes on to cheerily inform us that Iran has decided to play cowboy and charge a bunch of US battleships for no particular reason. In my mind, I envision Current President with his finger hovering over the "Blow Middle East to Little Bits" button, and I'm compelled to say, "Noooo! Hold off, potential new wars, until we can get someone else into the White House! We're so close!"

The election year is gearing up, and change is in the air. It's apropos that primaries happen during bowl season and the NFL playoffs. I can spend several hours watching grown men pummel each other on the field, and then switch over to debates and spend several hours watching grown men (and woman) pummel each other with microphones. Reporters are so giddily eager to report that they cannot stand the long wait until November, and so the news networks have been broadcasting election results the moment they hear the first ballot drop.

Wolf Blitzer: "And with two percent of the vote in, it looks like Obama has the clear lead, with Clinton and Edwards battling for second. What an outcome! We'll have analysts on to talk about this following the commercial break. Remember, only two percent of the vote is in, so nothing I say for the next hour means anything at all!"

It's a bit like watching a football game where the ball is invisible, and you don't know the score until after the final whistle. But that's half the fun, watching the political analysts make complete jackasses out of themselves in an effort to fill four hours of coverage. (Which, yes, I end up watching.) The current trend in election coverage, beside the ridiculously early results, is AMAZING TECHNOLOGY!! CNN apparently had the most money to burn on pointless gadgets. It began before Iowa, when Blitzer and some other pundit demonstrated a touch screen where they could drag a button across the screen and deposit it on top of a candidate's face. This made no sense whatsoever, and seemed to serve no purpose other than to cover the candidates' faces with buttons. They never actually used it for the real caucus coverage, but simply showed it a few days before to say, "Hey look what we've got! And we'll use it, too, if we can think of a good reason!"

This wasn't the worst of it. At some point, the news people must have sat down and said, "We have to keep the graphics moving!" MSNBC solved the problem of horrible static graphics by pivoting their bar charts back and forth ever so slightly, just enough to induce a headache, which was not nearly as bad as CNN's decision to mount video screens on pendulums from the ceiling, making them rock back and forth like someone had accidentally hit them, so much so that the camera had to sway to follow them. Seasickness and politics, together at last! In the end, CNN won the prize for "Most Ridiculous Concept" with their Magic Pie Chart, and - I am not kidding, that's what they actually called it. The Magic Pie Chart, which popped up magically from a piece of cardboard held by Anderson Cooper and was as legible as newsprint on a squirrel.


(In this still picture you can actually read it, but imagine it jumping around all over the screen.)

But enough about coverage. Let's talk results!! After Obama handily won the Iowa caucuses, every other candidate, Republican and Democrat alike, tried to make the case that they were most Obama-like. They wanted to out-Obama Obama. His catch word had been "change," and suddenly "change" was the word of the day for all the candidates. Change, change, change... that's what the American people want! Mitt Romney babbled, "I brought change. In Massachusetts, I brought change. I have done it. I have changed things."

And Hillary, in my favorite quote yet, said, "I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change. I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on thirty-five years of change."

Yes, change hit the political lexicon like a sack of quarters, but Obama-rama was sweeping the nation, and who could stop him? On Tuesday, so many new voters lined up outside of polling places that New Hampshire was beginning to run out of ballots, breaking records for voter turnouts. Everyone said, that's it! Obama will run away with the nomination!

Alas, no. Clinton lives to fight another day. And why? According to the pundits, those of most infinite wisdom, is has something to do with the fact that she "cried" on Monday, and by "cried" they mean that her voice choked up for a moment after the exhaustion caused by something like 70 straight hours of campaigning. Voters apparently said, "Oh! Poor Hillary! She is so sad! Let us make her President - that will cheer her up!" When women see a woman cry, they want to vote for her. (Which is silly, because as every woman knows, you cry to make men do something, not other women! Maybe this works backwards in politics.)

Personally, I think it's all a load of nonsense, but then... I have had enough encounters to make me wonder how the average woman thinks. (Buying a car, for example, when I said, "I want safety!" and the dealer said, "But look at the pretty colors!" and I said, "Safety, I want safety and fuel efficiency, durnit!" and the dealer said, "Do you want a blue car?") Oh please, for the love of American politics, don't let Hillary have won the vote because she cried. As one reporter said, "How far can you run a campaign on sympathy?"

McCain, as everyone expected, trounced the rest of his party. Or as the New York Times said:

Clinton Is Victor, Defeating Obama;
McCain Also Wins

In the midst of all this, the news channels briefly mentioned that Wyoming had voted for Romney, whatever. (The "whatever" was theirs, not mine.) Wyoming moved their primary up ridiculously early to try to catch a bit of national attention. Are you serious, Wyoming? The only time the nation pays attention to you is when they're trying to get from Colorado to Montana. For their foolish impudence, the GOP slashed their number of convention delegates in half, and similarly punished the other states that tried to jostle earlier into the limelight, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina, and Florida.

Oregon's primary, I should mention, is more or less symbolic. We don't vote until May. The state has taken a c'est la vie attitude, knowing that moving us up closer to Super Tuesday would do nothing at all, since at that point everyone is focusing on big bully states like California and New York. Help! We need primary election reform!

*Gasp!* Writing even a little about the process has drained the life force completely out of me. Must go energize with...something...comic books...perhaps chopping wood...

I swear, this is the longest freaking election ever.

Yet Another Political Blog

It'd be so easy right now to turn into a full-time political blog. What a great time it is for American politics! I love an election year.

Four years ago, I missed much of the primary broo-ha when I went to work on the Galapagos. Sometimes I heard a snippet or two on the shortwave radio, when I could pick up the BBC or the Royal Canadian Broadcasting Network, and then later in the fall, just when things were getting interesting, I went up to work in Alaska. This time I was even more cut off, since most of the local news had to do with the salmon run, but I did manage to catch one of the Kerry-Bush debates in the house of a bunch of Forest Service lackeys over in the big city of Ketchikan.

In both situations I was surrounded by coworkers less than impressed by the political process, with a why-should-I-care? mentality. But then, biologists tend to be a cynical lot all around, since our line of work often deals with documenting the destruction of our line of work. That cynicism often includes politics.

For me, this is all like a visit to the circus. If you haven't been paying attention to politics lately, you've been missing out. The debates last year were hilarious, with their hundreds of people crammed on one stage (or thereabouts), classy moments like Guiliani getting interrupted by an apparent attempt by God to smite him (and the other candidates taking cover), watching Gravel foam at the mouth, listening to Kuchinich talk about his UFO experience, and the entertaining inability of nearly everyone to answer a question with a "yes" or "no."

I've been watching tonight's New Hampshire debates, when the weather hasn't been blacking out the station, and here are some of my shallower thoughts:

Guiliani - Good gravy, he actually sounds somewhat likable and is making sense. Did I enter a parallel universe? I think he is playing casual until Rommey self-destructs.

Romney- Squirming under the pressure, fun to watch! Everyone but everyone on the stage is taking pot shots at him, since he is currently the most vulnerable and the least likable. I remember back in the early debates when the was the most composed, but now he's lost his cool.

Huckabee- Whoops, he's gotten completely overshadowed. I don't think anyone sees him as a real threat, so they're ignoring him unless he proves them otherwise. He's not coming across as a heavyweight here, but more as a farmer who wandered into a corporate business meeting by mistake.

McCain- Oh, he's good. Despite Romney's attacks, he maintains his cool and gives a solid message. He's not being swayed, which certainly makes him look like the most mature of the bunch. His campaign later reported that he was "the only adult in the room," and I'd tend to agree.

Thompson- If McCain is the adult, Thompson is the crotchety old grandpa who leans into the conversation and speaks his mind whenever he feels like it. "Crazy old grandpa!" the kids used to say! Nah, really, he's making a lot of good points, but I think he'd need a lot more caffeine to make it four years as President.

Ron Paul- (Not to be confused with "RuPaul.") Well, he says a lot of my own thoughts, asks a lot of challenging questions that I think the entire nation is asking, but it is so off of the mainstream Republican theme (and therefore "disloyal") that most of the rest of the candidates A)snicker at him, or B)quickly interrupt him. For example, he made the point that terrorists attack us not because we are wealthy and comfortable, but because we have a military presence in their countries, which I thought was excellent, but everyone else quickly told him what an simpleton he was. Again, he posed the question, "What if China came and did to the USA what we did to Iraq?" and again was quickly thrashed as being a loony. Which is a shame, because I think the GOP needs to come to terms with the Ron Paul viewpoint if they want to win in the general election.

Republicans in general- Yikes. Very heated, many cheap shots, covered much of the same ground as previous debates, but with a rearranged political field. Hooray! Isn't this fun?

After the Republicans had their say, the Democrats joined them briefly on stage and shook hands. It was a wonderful moment, first, to know that one of those people will be president, and second, to see genuine civility in some of the hugs and brief conversations between otherwise hated rivals. Yes, I do think some of it was genuine, and although their mikes were turned off, I had fun making up the dialogue:

Edwards to Huckabee: "Want advice on being a running mate?"

Ron Paul to Richardson: "Hey! Are you a nut with no chance of winning? Me too!!"

Hillary to McCain: "Since we see each other in Washington all the time, will you hug me? Everyone else up here is getting a hug..." (He did.)

Okay, now the entire time I've been writing, the Democrats have been debating, and their debate has been so quiet and civilized compared to the Republicans that I've been spacing out. I've picked up a few lines, but I feel like I've heard it all before. It's too bad Biden's not here to throw out a few of his humorous barbs. Alas, with what I have to work with:

Richardson- Yes, he still seems competent, but not presidential. His typical attitude has always been, "I can't believe everyone doesn't agree with everything I say!"

Obama- He is very on top of everything here. I'll be really surprised if he doesn't just plow through all of this to the presidency, just because he seems so unflappable. Actually, I don't know if that's really true; this is where paying attention right now would be a good thing.

Edwards- When he's not talking, he seems fidgety. When he is talking, he seems exhausted. Actually, all of these candidates look exhausted. I wonder if this is how the famous Howard Dean scream happened, breaking under sheer primary exhaustion?

Hillary- Oh Hillary. How much I want a woman president. I just don't want that woman president to be you.

Right. Now I'm going to go back to the project that I was supposed to be working on!

Politics....working?

I'm sitting here staring slack-jawed at the television screen. I can't believe it. Is it actually possible that my two favorite candidates are winning the Iowa caucuses?

Yes, that's right. I am currently quite fond of Huckabee and Obama. But what were the chances they would both win their respective races?

What is this strange feeling I feel? Could it actually be... hope in American politics? Could it be possibly be that our system actually let the best people win? Wow! I didn't know it could work like that! I always thought that was just a line out of my old Social Studies text book.

I am giddy with the idea that my choice in the general election might actually be between Good and Better, rather than the traditional "lesser of two evils." Where I could vote and be happy, rather than saying "ick" while looking at the ballot.

Again.... wow!