Too Late for Politics, Time for Poetry

We’re on the clock now, not the calendar--70 or so hours to learn what kind of country we have for the foreseeable future.

The America of Wednesday morning on is already out there, waiting to reveal itself, and nothing will change it, not Mitt Romney flag-waving, Joe Biden jokes about turning back the clock or legal chicanery in swing states.

The future will sweep away the psychic debris of political storms that have raged for almost two years, leaving reason and sanity in its wake. The only comfort in these final hours may be poetry.

What comes to mind is William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” written 90 years ago in post-World War I dread:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Humanity made it through a Great Depression and a Second World War after that. One way or another, it will again.

Update: On the last day before, candidates are out with rock bands and their own brand of poetry, spinning  weird images for glassy-eyed voters in swing states, hoping they will go to the polls still in a daze.

Yeats’ poem ends with a prophetic question:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Good-bye to American Know-How?

“Competence” in our society has many meanings, from simple acts like fixing a toilet leak to the legal concept of being in your right mind. All are the ballot Tuesday.

Beyond Mitt Romney’s delusions of adequacy, voting machines will list people for high office most Americans wouldn’t trust as plumbers or babysitters.

In Connecticut, a woman with no political experience and no ideas has spent $100 million earned from pro wrestling in two bids to become a Senator and fix U.S. society. She has a chance.

In Missouri, a man who made moronic comments about “legitimate rape” and was shunned by the GOP nationally is now back in a close Senate race.

In Indiana, Republicans can choose a thinker who declared that pregnancy resulting from rape was “God’s decision.”

After a week that highlighted the value of competence in a natural disaster, the battle for control of Congress goes on with that issue under the radar, obscured by partisan ground games and a late barrage of TV commercials.

When the Tea Party took control of the House in 2010, the tide brought in ideologues who pushed the nation into near-default and damaged its credit rating in the debt-ceiling showdown.

How much worse will it all be, regardless of who is President, if Democrats can’t loosen their grip in both houses?

Those who think that Congress’ approval ratings can’t go any lower will be in for abysmal surprises if they don’t make a last-minute effort to keep competence of all kinds on the ballot next week.

My 16 Votes for President

In 1944 I was 20, old enough to fight for my country but not to vote for or against those who had sent me. I was home and a veteran before I cast my first ballot for president.

Soon, storms and senior bones willing, I will perform that civic duty for the sixteenth time, casting a ballot for Barack Obama, an imperfect man who has done his best during trying times.

Looking back, I have voted for seven winners and eight losers. If the President is reelected, it would even my record, but that’s not the point.

Voting isn’t self-expression, like writing poetry. It is or should be the rational choice of someone most likely to do us all the most good (or least harm) during four years of signing or vetoing laws, naming Supreme Court judges and having a finger next to the nuclear button.

Only 12 years ago, Ralph Nader idealists made the difference between putting in the White House George W. Bush and Al Gore who, for all his shortcomings, would not have taken us into a needless war in Iraq or appointed Justices who think corporations are people.

Little wonder that nostalgia for the days before then now has Bill Clinton on the campaign trail playing Harry Truman to crowds yelling, “Give ‘em hell, Bill.”

Whatever your age, don’t think about poetry next Tuesday. Just do what I’m going to do—-pull the lever for Obama/Biden and hope that enough Americans have the good sense to do the same.

Can Caring Change an Election?

Cable networks, Fox included, fill up with images of people rescuing or helping one another, a media sea change from last week’s pictures of political hate and discord.

How will such a psychic shift affect Tuesday’s voting? Will Romney gain as poor people are cut off from voting access or Obama benefit from being seen as more dedicated to people than politicking?

The Christie crossover offers a clue. As pundits parse his motives, the Governor’s change of heart is nonetheless a reminder that, when it counts, the contingency of human life can trump politics.

It also calls to mind the wisdom of psychoanalyst-philosopher Erich Fromm who in the turbulent 1960s was preoccupied with what he called "The Myth of Care." Amid comparable social upheaval and rage about Vietnam back then, the author of "The Art of Loving" and "The Sane Society" kept searching newspapers and TV screens for images of people reaching out, helping and comforting one another.

His thesis was that such impulses are deeply ingrained in all humans and waiting to come to the surface when circumstances call them up, that they are their true feelings below a surface of selfish discord.

This week’s storm has brought with it to the surface of American life a new surge of caring. Will it be enough to overwhelm the Tea Party tides of selfishness and Romney-Ryan appeals to class division that have brought America to a turning point?

Can caring make the difference between whether we all sink or swim together?

Update:  In the storm's aftermath, caring about climate change brings Barack Obama another key endorsement, of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg:

“We need leadership from the White House--and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants...which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year...

The independent billionaire Mayor notes that Mitt Romney has “taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care. But he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the health-care model he signed into law in Massachusetts.

“If the 1994 or 2003 version of Mitt Romney were running for president, I may well have voted for him...”

“Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both found success while their parties were out of power in Congress--and President Obama can, too. If he listens to people on both sides of the aisle, and builds the trust of moderates, he can fulfill the hope he inspired four years ago and lead our country toward a better future for my children and yours. And that’s why I will be voting for him.”