Those Chickens are Looking Better and Better

I was on the phone with a political contact and friend up here, and she said that if McCain/Palin win in November, she's out of politics for good. (I know the feeling -- I'm old enough that I can remember feeling that way when Nixon won in 1972!) And on a day when the Dow Jones lost 500 points, I can also understand why my friend thinks Armageddon is in store if the Republicans win the presidency for another term. Even I'm not that pessimistic, although I do look at our 24 acres and think, "Well, with some solar panels, a wind turbine, a vegetable garden and some chickens, we could probably eke out a living on this property..."

All of this led into a conversation I just had with my husband. He's thinking about seeing if he can get some work in his field (computer programming) to help offset some larger-than-expected outlays this year. This led to a conversation about the economy, a favorite topic of mine. I don't entirely subscribe to the notion of Armageddon, but I do think the economy is in the toilet for at least five years if McCain wins in November. Husband asked me why I think that.

"Because [McCain is] an idiot about economics," I said. Three times.

"Why do you [Americans] give so much power to one individual?" my English husband asked.

I spontaneously came up with the following theory, which you can all help me refine. It is in the American psyche to believe in the power of the individual. We don't do monarchies, we don't do collectives (except as exercises in counter-culture), and we don't really trust others too much. But we believe in superheroes, which is the individual come to save us! So we like to empower the president with the ability to get stuff done. It also helps that Congress is effectively a committee of committees, and committees are many people trying to do the work of one -- a pattern card of inefficiency.

[In defense of Congress, I would like to say at this point that we desperately need it to keep doing the watch-dog work it excels at. Congress doesn't make the president work better, it makes the president work more honestly.]

But when we elect presidents, we tend to like them stupid, folksy, or messianic -- or some combination of all three. Franklin Roosevelt was messianic, which turned out to be a good thing. Carter was folksy and not messianic; not such a success as a president. Reagan was, arguably, stupid and folksy -- he didn't accomplish a lot of the stuff he promised as a candidate; he might have been messianic, though. It's kind of an actor's trait, isn't it? Clinton: folksy & messianic. Bush: stupid & folksy.

Obama: messianic, in a good way. Not stupid or folksy, though.

McCain: None of the three. Which could explain why his campaign was so lacking in fire before the pick of Palin as his running mate. She's certainly folksy, and her lack of experience looks a bit dumb, and I think she's got messianic written all over her resume. The trifecta!

So what's the problem? Well, we have real problems in our economy. Funny thing I heard on the radio the other day -- some guy (and I feel bad that I don't recall enough about which program he was on to be able to scour the Internet for a link to his book) has a theory that Republicans rack up huge deficits in their presidencies solely so that the succeeding Democratic president has to deal with the carnage on his/her watch. It happened to Carter, it happened to Clinton, and it will happen to whomever follows George W. Bush. This makes sense -- Reagan talked a good game, but he left his successor (George H.W. Bush) with an economic mess, which as a basically honorable guy, he tried to deal with. (Remember "Read my lips"?) That was political suicide.

So if McCain wins, we're in the toilet, economically, for four more years, `cause I really don't see him raising taxes. And I don't think we can expect another technological boom to save us, the way in did in the 90s.

*sigh*

Those chickens are starting to look pretty good, right about now.