Winding Down

The news is full of ticking clocks, counting down the weeks, days and hours until the November elections. A couple of years back, James Carville was asked what the election was all about, and he said "It's still the economy, stupid." If someone from the third estate were to stick a microphone in Mister Carville's face today, he might say the same thing. It's what elections have always been about, even way back when James had a little more hair and worked for the governor of Arkansas. And he didn't look so much like a screaming ghoul.
Ghoulishness aside, it has been every politician's job to put a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage ever since there have been chicken, pots and garages. Feeding people, housing them, and keeping them healthy all fail to hold a candle to the promise of giving them money. Not that anyone out there today would lower themselves to actually buying votes. That would be unseemly. Instead, they will suggest that whatever their opposition is suggesting will cost you money, and there is no way that you would want to throw away what little money you have on such wasteful notions as health care and rebuilding our nation's infrastructure. Even the Democrats have backed quietly away from their shining achievement of creating a National Health Care Program. The efforts to get the country's economy off life support have not been as successful as many might have hoped, even though we haven't fallen off the cliff into a full-scale depression.
That's the victory. That's the problem. Stupid. Recovery from nearly a decade of war and tax cuts won't happen overnight, and certainly not before November. While we're waiting, however, you can bet that progress toward any substantive change will have to wait while the finger-pointing builds to fever pitch. Then there will be the customary victory lap and then a break for the holidays, giving us all pause before we plunge into 2011. And the presidential election be just months away. Twenty-some months, but just months away. I promise.