What, Me Worry?

I’ve had nearly two years to think about this, since the current presidential campaign, set to mercifully end in two weeks, began approximately two years ago.

Really, it did, didn’t it? Halfway through the second Bush administration, those who control what we see and hear on TV and in the newspapers became as restive as children on Christmas morning who can’t wait for it to be morning. You remember getting up at 4 a.m. to poke around in the dark under the tree and see what you got? Then your dad thought there might be burglars in the house, came out with a baseball bat and chased you back to bed?

That’s what the media did around mid-2006. They couldn’t wait for it to be Christmas morning, e.g. January, 2009. So they started hawking up Hillary, Barack and the rest of the gang even before the 2006 World Series was over. (For those who have forgotten, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers that time, revenge for 1968, when it went the other way.)

This has been the longest presidential campaign anyone has ever seen. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who will be glad to see it over and done with. It feels to me as if Barack Obama has been running for president since I was in college, and I was in college when Jimmy Carter was running for president. You know, back around the time Barack Obama was born.

So I’ve had plenty of time to think about how I’m going to deal with what the media are relentlessly, joyfully, orgasmically telling us is “inevitable:” “President Obama.” Ooh, all I have to do is say the name and I can hear the squeals of joy coming from 1150 15th St. NW. (For those of you who don’t live in Washington, D.C., that’s the address of the Washington Post, which even my friend Holly Inder, a Democrat, admits is so biased that it deserves to be called the official newsletter of the Democratic Party.)

I’m not voting for Obama. And anyone who suggests that it’s because of the color of his skin can wait for me to take my morning dump and then dine heartily on it. Were it not for the fact that he’s a crypto-Marxist whose political dues, if you want to call them that, were paid in the corrupt Chicago wardheeling machine, and who moreover has no problem rubbing elbows with ‘60s bomb-throwers and crazed hatemongering preachers, I probably would vote for him. I’m not voting for Barack Obama because I don’t like his politics. Period. I wish I did. But I don’t.

Furthermore, I expect an Obama presidency to yield little good for America outside of giving bubble-brained white liberals another opportunity to feel good about themselves. And frankly, I don’t care if the Lexus-driving crowd out there in Fairfax County that hasn’t gotten around to scraping the John Kerry stickers off its bumpers feels good about itself or not. I’m concerned about the well-being of the republic as a whole, and I don’t think a reincarnation of Jimmy Carter, the worst president of the 20th century, is what the republic needs, now or ever. And that’s exactly what I see Obama shaping up to be: another Carter. Another dithering feely-goody who smiles and makes speeches while America’s enemies overseas are building nuclear arsenals and sneering defiantly at what they see as the easily-exploitable weaknesses of the Great Satan. Obama thinks he can deal with people like Ahmadinejad by making nice with them? We’ll see what comes of that. I only hope that it isn’t a dirty bomb wiping out downtown Raleigh, NC, followed by the sound of snickering laughter from the shadows. But that’s what I more than half-expect once President Obama has made good on his promise to bring back September 10th and act like the next day never happened, then proceed to approach those whose wettest wet dream is to kill as many Americans as possible by offering them tea and cookies. Good luck.

I spent the afternoon and evening of September 11, 2001 riveted to my TV set with horror, as did millions of others. But when the next September 11 comes around, and Raleigh NC is in ruins, or Des Moines IA or wherever they decide to strike next, I don't want to hear about it. When President Obama has renamed Homeland Security The Peace Department in the name of making us more popular overseas, and made terrorism once again a game in we respond to bombs with subpoenas, don't ring my phone.

I’m serious. I live in Washington. More than likely they will strike again here, not in Raleigh or Des Moines. And when they do, President Obama will be busy signing legislation to raise taxes, not for defending our country from global terrorism, but for more federal giveaway programs and an expanded bureaucracy. It’s going to be 1965 again, which is what all those aging former hippies out there who now teach Comparative Literature and Gender Studies in America’s universities are secretly whispering to themselves. They’ll be young again; it’ll be the summer of love again. Maybe the word “groovy” will come back.

But when President Obama and I both go up in smoke, (I live about four miles from the White House) let my last thinks all be thanks, as W.H. Auden wrote. I don’t want to know. He’ll be busy building socialism while the house burns; I’ll be reading William Blake. On the day Obama is inaugurated, I’m canceling my subscription to the newspaper and all my magazines except Gramophone and IndyCar. I already don’t watch television, so I don’t have to worry about that, but I’m going to change my home page to poetry.com or perhaps catfancier.com. People like Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon are always threatening to leave the country if the Republicans win (and you’ll notice they never do.) I can’t afford to leave the country, and furthermore I live right in the cross-hairs, not in Hollywood where it’s nice and safe.

But for the four years which, I hope, is all it will take for America to get over the idea that life is just one big Oprah Winfrey Show and that if you hear a big kaboom somewhere, all you have to do is hit the “play again?” button and go back to your video screen, I’ll be ensconced with Yeats, Thomas Hardy and perhaps the Venerable Bede, who was writing when the dust of the Roman empire had not yet cleared and it wasn’t safe to go outside.

In one of his earliest songs, written when he was obviously quite young, Paul Simon wrote, “I have my books and my poetry to protect me.” He was thinking of frustrated love, I’m sure. I’m thinking of something much more ominous. I am a rock, I am an island. Knock before you enter. I’ll have the music turned up loud. I always said I wanted Mozart to be the last thing I hear before I depart this earth.