Yesterday's exit polls were, in a word, encouraging. I had a brief sense the nation might be slowly waking from its national nightmare, rousing from the dark slumber filled with the kind of fear and distortions one can usually only find in bad dreams. I was never convinced. I was hopeful. In the company of friends last evening, I routinely refreshed the real-time county-by-county results from my home state of Ohio. I held out hope that Cuyahoga and Lucas counties, populous and heavily Democratic, would carry the day. As the votes continued to tally, however, the inevitable came into sight. We split up around 11. I felt like it was the middle of the night. I felt drained. On the way to our cars, I asked, "What more could have gone wrong these last four years?"
I had sensed it coming. As my Sept. 21 entry noted, there was a feeling in the air. You could sense the movement of nothing good, like a Santa Ana coming through the mountain passes, bringing ions that dance invisibly around you, doing the moonwalk on your nerves. And, apart from evenings with my liberal friends, sipping wine and chomping salad as we expressed complete ignorance as to defendable reasons anyone would vote for him, I could tell the temperature wasn't there. Americans dropped Abu Ghraib quicker than Big Brother 5. It did not enter deeply into the national discourse because it did not tell us things that went with the narrative, the narrative being that we were there to free the Iraqi people from an unjust and brutal dictator. It did not serve the narrative to have Lindy English strutting boldly, Popeye-like, through a line of prisons chained like dogs. The piles of bodies, the hooded figure, Christ-like: we tivoed past that part. We were more interested in the promos for upcoming episodes of "A Free Iraq."
Worse, people listened and granted credence to the argument that the war in Iraq was an important part of the war on terror. People think what we've done there has made a difference. I fear it has, but not in the ways the administration would have you believe. It's been a recruiting campaign for young Muslims, polarizing them against us in the same ways Bush has polarized our country against itself.
I hope I'm wrong, and the next four years aren't as nearly disastrous as I imagine. I hope we're all safe. I hope the conflict in Iraq can be controlled and resolved. I hope jobs are created and staffed by Americans. I hope there is prosperity for everyone. I hope more Americans find affordable health care. But that's not the rumble my feet are feeling, not the way of the wind. The decision was on all of our shoulders. History will give us clues as to who did the right thing.
Or it may tell us all at once.