Political Tuesdays: November 4, 1992

It will always be one of the great honors of my life that I was present on the South Lawn of the White House the day after Election Day, when George H.W. Bush arrived home and addressed his supporters. C-SPAN archives carry the video still. 

I was 25, newly married, and had never been to the White House before that day. But senior staff at National Right to Life, all of whom had handshake photos of themselves with Reagan or Bush, generously donated their tickets to junior staff the day before the election. They must have known the polls were not promising, and they wanted to give us the chance to witness presidential history as they had. Our election night party in the office was bleak. I was still clinging to a bit of immature magical thinking. We had worked hard enough, surely. And then there was a fax that came in sometime in the afternoon with internal polling from the campaign projecting a defeat. After that, things became somber and deathlike for the rest of the evening.

Still, the next morning dawned, and I dressed in my cute blue checked dress that I had bought before my wedding, braided my hair and set off with my friends and co-workers. Our group was perhaps isolated from other WH staffers and major campaign donors who were present there; we felt that we had worked our little hearts out, but Bush's own staff had let him down. I remember comments from those months... staffers shopping their resumes and not focusing on the election; campaign director sleeping with the enemy, no real loyalty to the President. And the American electorate has always been fickle, and the press has always been hostile to Republicans, but something changed in that election cycle. We knew we were in for 4-8 years of a really difficult time, and most of us were teary-eyed for much of the time we were there. But White House events must go on. We were handed flags to wave by staffers; it was a gray day but not bad weather for November, as I recall. I was running on adrenaline and nerves, which always makes me feel especially socially awkward. It was a pretty large crowd. 

The Bushes got off Marine One, and the crowd cheered wildly. Most of us were toward the back of the crowd; I don't think we're in the video,  but I can't be sure without better eyes and a bigger screen. It must have been a bitterly difficult day for the President, and I'm sure he was emotional, but his speech was short, upbeat, and focused on others. He could have talked about the big accomplishments of his administration; the coalition he built for the Gulf War; the fall of the Communist regime, but he didn't. He simply praised his supporters for their hard work, encouraged them to support the Clintons, and expressed confidence that "we" had served America well... "And maybe history will record it that way." That short, offhand sign-off has stayed with me all these years. 

Yes, I do think history will record your nobility of character and your lasting positive influence on America. Thank you for your life of service, George H.W Bush. RIP. 

Randomday

It's been such a weird week. When the history books are written they'll probably still be talking about what a weird week it was. So I'll mix normal Randomday material with political weirdness and the blog will go on. Just as the country will. Probably.

So how many people were surprised by the results of the election? Steve says he thought all along that Trump could win. Maybe he should have been hired as a pollster or political consultant. But most of us were shocked.

Trump's acceptance speech was surprising... partly because his election was the biggest surprise, but also because he seemed ever so slightly less orange, and, if not quite presidential, at least dignified and conciliatory. I'm honestly not sure how to feel about him; I find his extreme extroversion toxic and he tends to suck all the air out of a room when he speaks, but that may just be my introversion reacting to him. If I don't listen to his speeches and never make the mistake of trusting media accounts of him again, and if he is surrounded by adults who make sure he follows the laws of the land (and put his Twitter account in a lockbox), he might even grow to be a decent president. It's a bigger job than just one man, and I do believe people can grow.  It's nice to see Republicans win all around: and while I don't really count Trump as a real Republican, there are real Republicans I respect who are working with him.

Hillary's concession speech... when it finally came after a pretty long delay... was really gracious. Nothing in the race became her like the leaving of it. I don't quite get why her followers are so terribly sad. She'll be okay. She has the consolation that she now has time to spend with Bill and the rest of the family, and she can go back to Chappaqua and get that building permit and pay the fees she forgot about for the work on her second mansion. And preumably, she can continue accepting foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and grotesquely inflated speaking fees. What she'll spend it all on I don't know... she already has pantsuits in every color of the rainbow. I think she has learned not to call people "deplorable." Mock the Midwest at your peril! (I mean, did you see WISCONSIN going red?!) I do think it would be nice if she could discover that yes, the unborn person does have rights.

Portland has been experiencing protests/riots for five nights straight. It started out as poor distraught Millennials who couldn't deal with an electoral disappointment. I try not to mock or gloat...too much. But I've been there, on the White House lawn, crying and hugging people the day after losing an election (1992). I was devastated, and in my 20's. It never occurred to me to march in the streets and riot. Republicans generally don't do that. We always just were sad for awhile and moved on. But this is a different era, and these are the children of helicopter parents who have protected them from even the slightest disappointment. Not to mention all the apocalyptic self-help clickbait articles about the election: "what will we tell our daughters?!" For starters, how about, "respect the law, stay away from unlawful assemblies, obey the police when they tell you to disperse, and no, you may not take a baseball bat to the #TrumpProtest #TrumpRiot #NotMyPresident or whatever they're calling it tonight."

Seriously, Portland has experienced more than a million dollars of damage to various businesses. Police are tired from having to don riot gear for 5 nights in a row and even the mayor is pleading with people to channel their anti-Trump hate towards his favorite liberal causes like Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile he wants to encourage normal Portlanders to patronize businesses to make up for the damage that has already been done. I don't ultimately think he will be successful; the Columbia River has become a bigger barrier to me wanting to go shopping in Portland than it ever was before. I'm thinking Facebook will soon need to have a nightly check-in feature for Portland and other cities where riots are going on: "yes, I got home safely and am now in my house with the blinds drawn." To be fair, the naive young people who started the protest movement have found that less idealistic anarchists are moving in and hijacking their peaceful protests. You've heard the saying that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality? ... I'm predicting a conservative renaissance even in liberal Portland.

Okay, enough politics. Steve is visiting Peter in Pullman this weekend and is even now watching the WSU Berkeley game. Last I checked WSU was winning handily, but Steve is wearing his Berkeley shirt. (He likes to say he became a conservative at Berkeley).

This week I started the job of pruning our grape fines. I don't think we ever did it right, and they are really gnarly. It doesn't seem to be possible to kill them once they've been established, or we would probably have done it, but previous attempts to prune and train them have not been successful. I have brought in some of my tender herbs (lemon verbena and pineapple sage) to try to keep them over winter without killing them. I also planted some sage and rosemary seeds to see if I can grow new plants from the seeds of the old. Several sage sprouts and one rosemary have resulted. Again, I'll be trying not to kill them this winter.

I introduced the girls to some classic American concepts today. I fried up some Spam for breakfast: Quarta had a piece and Tertia had half a piece... too salty. I think it has been at least 35 years since I last tasted Spam. This evening we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's probably been 15 years since I saw that last, or more. I never realized Charlie Sheen was in it. And the vengeful principal actor also played the emperor in Amadeus. And the school secretary with the high-pitched voice has a huge list of voice acting credits on IMDB. My mother would have loved IMDB... back in the '80s she WAS our family IMDB. But she couldn't remember names with 100% speed and accuracy, so there would be that moment in the early part of a film where she'd say, "Oh, that's ... what's his name?" and then a couple hours later when everyone had forgotten she'd remember and blurt out his name, whatever it was. We'd be in the middle of dinner and she'd put her fork down and say, "Cesar Romero!" or "Lon Chaney Jr!" It was a gift. I think Tertia has it too, but only with actors who have played in Harry Potter or Once Upon a Time.

Clarity and Peace

Since the Indiana primary, I have been struggling with near-constant anxiety and depression about the political situation. I gave up any hope of a Republican victory, (remembering that I have been a Republican for 40 years: Memories of Election Days Past written in 2012), with only a long-shot hope that the Free the Delegates people would stop Trump at the Convention, and then even less that he might step down or be forced out by parliamentary procedures with in the party. I staked out a position with the #NeverTrump crowd. I kept getting Civiqs polls, which I would always answer with "I will never vote for Donald Trump" as well as "I will never vote for Hillary Clinton." And I followed through. I have never not voted, and I have never not voted for a Republican, at least in the President slot. If I had still been living in a battlground state, like Ohio or Virginia, I would have been even more anxious and paralyzed by indecision. Because as much as I distrust the better angels of Trump's temperament to be a guiding hand on the rudder of the ship of state, I am long familiar with Hillary Clinton's policies, and they are toxic. To an honest question as to which one is preferable to the other, I was not sure. And I know I was not alone. In a sense, living in a deep blue state gave me the luxury of writing in the name of someone I knew would not win, but I, like most people it seems, was convinced Hillary was inevitable.

Seeking some peace on the eve of Election Day, I did what every Calvinist does: I googled "Providence of God memes." You know I love quotes, and some good ones surfaced. That led to researching several quotes of former presidents, and I posted many of them on my Facebook page:

"Worry is the sin of distrusting the promise and providence of God. And yet it is a sin that Christians commit perhaps more frequently than any other." - John MacArthur

"It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of God." - John Calvin

"It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor." - George Washington

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day." - Abraham Lincoln

"We have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

"I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings upon this House, and all that may hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof." - John Adams

(Mr. Adams sounds like a crotchety old man. I have to respect that).

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!" - Abraham Lincoln

So, going into the day of the election, I had a little peace about the outcome even if I was very sad. But then yesterday morning, standing on the driveway with Tertia and waiting for the short bus at 6:30, I felt compelled to talk to her. She had already reminded me it was election day, and with her childcare class she was scheduled to assist in some kind of election day craft. She had watched some of one of the debates with me, and she is 17... she could vote next year. She's probably hearing all sorts of political talk at school and, because she can't process irony or abstract concepts very well, I decided I needed to tell her in very simple terms why I couldn't support Hillary Clinton for President, and why I was sad that she was probably going to win. I told her it was because Clinton thinks it is okay to kill babies before they're born, if the mother doesn't want them. That's all I said. I couldn't bring myself to tell her that unborn children with Down syndrome are killed at a much higher rate than any other group. I didn't need to. She got very quiet and obviously sad, trying to process. How do you process that an entire political system is built upon the premise of selectively denying the right to life to those most vulnerable? And how would you explain to an intellectually disabled young woman that a woman who believes it is a fundamental right to kill babies just like her is probably going to become the next president? I had a moment of sad clarity then. Sometimes, it really is that simple. People who promote the killing of babies shouldn't become president.

I found myself unexpectedly happy to see Hillary go down... maybe some of it was Schadenfreude, but also, and this was a surprise, I almost started rooting for Trump. I'll try not to gloat on Facebook, and I'll try not to use the laughing face emoji on your "why I'm mourning today" links. I'll save the snark for Twitter. But if you want an analysis of the election that I essentially agree with, check this, especially points 2 and 6. Mock Middle  America at your peril. And you really have cried "wolf" too many times. 

I respect the right of every voter to follow his or her conscience, and I believe that's what played out yesterday, and we have to live with the results, and find a way to live with each other going forward. It's a complicated set of reasons that motivates any one of us in the simplest and most straightforward election, and this was not that. I still have very grave concerns about Trump's fitness for office. But I will do my duty as an American to support him, and my duty as a Christian to pray for him.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds." - Abraham Lincoln

Master of the Game

Master of the Game

with Hillary Rodham Clinton and chorus of Democrats

From the tragi-comedy Les Déplorables (forthcoming)

Enter Hillary, wearing Armani and greeting chorus members

Welcome, my friends, sit yourselves down,

And meet the best fundraiser in town.

Clinton Foundation, not what it looks,

We’ll keep your favors off of the books.

Seldom will you see folks like Bill and me,

We grant you influence for your generosity—

Master of the game, I really have no shame,

Ready with a fake smile cause you’re all the same.

Schmooze a Saudi prince, butter up some banks,

Major donor access is how I say “thanks!”

Everybody’s favorite crony, doesn’t cost me to be nice—

In my administration, everything has got its little price.

Charge ‘em for the meet, extra for the greet,

Ten percent for sitting in a front row seat.

Here a little bait, there a little switch,

You have to pay to play till we’re all super-rich—

Foreigners are more than welcome, Lincoln bedroom’s occupied,

Thirty thousand emails, none of which were classified (of course not!)

Master of the game, doctor of the spin,

Huma’s here to keep me on my Coumadin,

I had a little fall, it was nothing much at all,

Soon we’ll celebrate at the Inaugural Ball!

When it comes to wiping servers, there are lots of tricks I know,

But see that ol’ glass ceiling, soon you’ll all be reeling

Feeling how dang powerful I grow!

(Enter Anthony Weiner with laptop: he hands it over to FBI director James Comey, entering from opposite side. As this goes on, Bill and Huma whisper worriedly to each other.)

The Clinton body count, it might increase by one,

As long as no one finds me with the smoking gun,

Champion of the rich, nanny of the State,

All these revelations coming much too late:

I’ve already been anointed; early voting favors me!

It’s in my pantsuit pocket, soon I’ll be the master of D.C!

(full chorus, while Hillary suffers from coughing fit)

Master of the game! Doctor of the spin!

Stonewall for a few more days and then we’re in!

Everybody’s favorite crony! Everybody’s bosom friend!

Grant insider access, raise a buncha taxes,

(All these moral lapses short-circuit my synapses!)

I’m working like a demon and I’ll win!

Author's note: I saw Les Miserables on Broadway as a college senior in 1989; I supported George H.W. Bush in the 1992 campaign that gave us Bill Clinton. I was in the crowd on the WH lawn that welcomed President Bush home from Texas the day after the election. Somewhere between the Whitewater scandal and the Lincoln Bedroom scandal of the first Clinton administration, I became convinced that the Clintons were the Thenardiers, the corrupt innkeepers, of Les Miserables, somehow come to political power in America. This song is the long-incubating result. - Katherine Chapman

No Place for An Election

One of my earliest memories is being taken along with my mother to the polling place in Akron, Ohio, an enormous school gym with the smell of polished wood floors mingled with the smoke being puffed by the election workers, and the hum of rustling papers and hushed voices.  I asked who my mother had voted for afterwards, and she said it was not something you told everybody; it was special, something you thought about very carefully before doing.  Voting was obviously a sacred ritual of American civil religion - more important than the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance I would join in later; less noisy but more momentous than the Fourth of July.  It meant something.  I wasn't sure yet what, but it meant something.

A lifetime later, and I am feeling rather disconnected from the physical reality of Election Day.  In Washington State, we no longer go to a polling place to vote.  All elections are conducted by mail-in ballot.  There is no satisfying drop of the heavy paper ballot into the ballot box, no smell of gymnasium floors, no pleasant repartee with the retirees manning the tables for the precincts.  It's virtual voting, if you will, in the comfort of your own home, with only the standard-issue voter's guide, also sent in the mail, and chatting with whoever else in your household wants to share the voting chore with you.  This is all done in the name of making it easier for people to vote, and trying to ensure greater participation.  I'm sure these are all good things, but it feels less exciting, even less important somehow.

Now, it's not a Presidential election year, and Washington State has no Senate race this year.  I maintain that local races are important, of course. I will be interested in watching the results in other states, I suppose.  But I can't help also feeling that we are missing out on something by not going through the shared minor hardship of driving to the local polling place, waiting in line with our fellow-citizens, deciphering the ballot then and there, and seeing our own ballot join the ranks of others.  It gives you just that much more confidence, that we are all citizens of the same country and we all have the same basic concerns no matter what party we favor.  It's not that I'm afraid the ballots won't get counted (although there is always that nagging feeling that they might not be if no one is watching the polls, because there are no polls to watch).  It's not that I don't care about the races I voted for.  But I think that something vital is lost in our common culture when we don't ever learn to do even one thing as a community, at the same time.

When was the last time that everyone in America was doing the same thing at roughly the same time?  September 11 maybe?  Maybe watching Presidential election returns or debates, but more likely a major sporting event.  Mostly, we go our own ways, living lives of personal peace and affluence, skipping the hardship as much as possible.  Sometimes, on an uncomfortable airline flight, I have had the surreal experience of looking around and thinking, "are these the people I'm going to die with?"  But at least there were people there, and most of them were Americans.  It's a little the same with elections; it's a shared experience, and even if a great tragedy occurs, in the air or at the polls, it is our experience as Americans and we will go through it together.  This all-mail balloting tends to lead many people to see elections as major nuisances, and our government as something that is somehow anti-social.  Political ads are increasingly more strident and divisive, and it's a little easier to tune them out or write them off now.  We are more cynical when unsolicited ads, calls, and ballots show up at our residences.  We stop seeing government as something that we change, a series of real tasks facing real people in a real world.  And we tend to care only about the big races, forgetting that every big race started out as a little one, with people in it who were once unknowns.

It is at times like these that I like to think of the time I physically met our Congresswoman, Jamie Herrera Beutler, when she was still a state representative and spoke at the Cedar Tree groundbreaking, and little toddler Tertia tried to climb into her car which was parked right next to ours.  The physicality of it may not take away my nostalgia for the smell of polished wood gymnasium floors, but it tells its own story of connectedness in an increasingly isolated America.

We must hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Political Tuesdays: Memories of Election Days Past

Election Day, 1968 - I was learning to walk.  My family was living in the Netherlands as expat American grad students.  I have no memories of this election day, but the Republican won.

Election Day, 1972 - I think I have very hazy memories of this.  Vague separation anxiety as I accompanied my mother to the polls in Akron, Ohio but couldn't go into the booth with her... I kept an eye on her legs.  And it was interesting that everyone else in the voting booths had only legs to look at.  I think I asked her in the car afterward who she had voted for, and she told me it was a secret.  It is quite possible, at this stage of her life, that she was still voting Democratic.  But the Republican won. And I'm not sure I even was aware of the name "Nixon" until the day he resigned, because my mother made a point of taking us down to the TV in the lobby of the dorm where we were staying at Westminster College in Pennsylvania for the New Wilmington Missionary Conference to watch his resignation speech.

Election Day, 1976 - I cast my vote for Ford in the mock election at Turkeyfoot Elementary School in Portage Lakes, Ohio.  I was disappointed when Carter won, both the mock and the real election.  But my father did tell me it was remarkable that a peanut farmer who had never been heard of outside his home state could become the President of the United States.  And his daughter was my age.  My dad said he would see about arranging a playdate.  I worried for 2 whole years that Amy Carter might show up for a sleepover and my room would be a mess.

Election Day, 1980 - I was definitely political by this time, staying up late to watch election returns in our den in Manchester, Ohio.  I kept track on a sheet of notebook paper as the states rolled in for Reagan.  I remember how excited I was when it was New York that put him over the top.  I know there are a lot of people rooting for a similar turnout today.  Now I'm teaching students the same age I was during that election.  If today is as uplifting and exciting as the Reagan landslide was, great -- but I've also seen reverses of political fortunes and have learned there is a season for everything.

Election Day, 1984 - There was real partisan pleasure in watching Reagan trounce Mondale.  I won't deny it.  Is it really true as George Will suggests, that Minnesota has a chance to swing red today?  I sincerely hope so.

Election Day, 1988 - The first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote.  I was a senior in college, voted in Ohio by absentee ballot, and watched election returns and debates from whatever TV I could find available in the dorm lobby or basement.  Bad reception.  It was Grove City, so there was only one token Dukakis voter in our midst.  I learned in this election cycle that the guy you support in the primary is very rarely the guy you get to vote for in the general, and that it's all okay as long as the party comes together for the good of the country.  It may not seem like it's that big of a lesson, but it's one that many voters of middle age or older still haven't learned yet.  Of course, George H.W. Bush wasn't Reagan.  But even Reagan wasn't as Reaganesque as our memories would have him be.

Election Day, 1992 - I was a newlywed, working for National Right to Life, voting in Northern Virginia, and this was a hard one.  I was young and idealistic and I didn't think it could be possible that God would let a philandering, lying narcissist like Bill Clinton win over a thoroughly decent, classy guy like Bush.  We got a fax from the campaign mid-afternoon that basically said internal polling put the writing on the wall.  It was in black and white and I still couldn't process it.  The day after I went with several other junior staff (senior staff were probably too depressed to deal with it, and gave their tickets away) to the White House lawn to welcome President Bush back.  We saw the helicopter land, waved American flags, hugged each other and cried.  Bush gave his speech about how maybe history will have a different opinion, Rai Rojas picked up a leaf which he would later use as a metaphor for lost hopes for unborn children, and we returned to the office, convinced that we had worked harder to re-elect Bush than Bush's own campaign staff.  As a Calvinist I had an easier time accepting the results of the election than many of my Catholic friends, but it was hard.  I learned that God has different plans than mine, and I also learned a certain amount of distrust for the voters who don't weigh moral values highly in making their voting decision.  To this day, I heartily despise Bill Clinton, although I will admit he was a more competent leader than Barack Obama.

Election Day, 1996 - Secundus' due date was November 5, but he came 3 days early.  I was at home in Littleton, Colorado with two little boys.  My mother and grandmother were visiting, my lifelong-Democrat grandmother brought a little stuffed elephant labeled "Bob Dole".  By this time I was used to tuning out the President, and I had a brand new baby to distract me, so this loss wasn't quite as bad.  But I'm pretty sure both my little boys were born with a preference for Rush Limbaugh's voice.

Election Day, 2000 - We had just relocated to Washington State in 1999, and I had a new little girl, my "extra-chromosome right wing", who gave me extra motivation to vote against Al Gore.  I knew that my vote would not really matter in my state, but I was ready for the light at the end of the tunnel.  I was optimistic that Bush would win; when the initial Florida results came in I was thrilled and figured that was it.  But of course, it wasn't.  This was the election I learned to have contempt for the "anything to win" mentality of the Democratic party machine.  And when I realized how fractured our national culture had become... sadness at that and happiness at the fact we had elected a decent man were mixed for me in this election.

Election Day, 2004 - It was hard to imagine how any Democrats, no matter how partisan, could support the arrogant John Kerry, but we were still agonizingly sharply divided.  I began to be frustrated by the apolitical and third-party voters populating my community... why didn't they see how big the stakes were?  Why didn't they realize that an imperfect candidate is much to be preferred to giving up their voice altogether?  I really hope their pure idealism has comforted them during the last 4 years.

Election Day, 2008 - There was something Kennedyesque about Obama's rise to power from obscurity.  I consoled myself with the thought that his election proved America was not a racist country, and at least he seemed like a personally upright individual in comparison to Clinton.  I strongly supported Sarah Palin because I liked her, I liked her ability to give an inspiring speech without a teleprompter, I liked the fact that she was a fellow Down syndrome mom and committed to the pro-life issue.  As a knitter active on Ravelry, I had been terribly distressed by the absolute vitriol directed at her by the ultra-leftist hate groups.  (If you think civility on the internet is at an all-time low, you should have seen the online knitting forums in 2008).  It was a harsh education, but I don't regret it.  But more than ever, I'm convinced of the need for Republican leadership in the presidency, and particularly the need for Christian "values voters" to make their voices heard.  If we don't, we forfeit our say in the future of our civilization.  The stakes are very high.  There is no guarantee that the American republic will endure, not without citizen education and involvement.  Or even with it.

So there you have it, a history of my electoral thoughts over a lifetime, two continents, and from one end to another of America.  Your votes are already cast, so you can amuse yourselves by reading this if you, like me, are anxiously watching the returns roll in.  I'm wearing my team colors - red, been wearing red for a week now - and I've been encouraged by a lot that I've read.  But it could still be a long night, with disappointment at the end of it.  I'm hoping not, but let's stay strong.