The God and the Twilight

How smart I’m not. Part One.

Blogging has been a humbling experience. I’ve spent three and a half years proving I’m not nearly as smart as I thought I was, and I’ve discovered to my chagrin that, at least when it comes to politics, I have absolutely no powers of persuasion. No matter how well I write I never change anyone’s mind. America has not become a land fit for heroes because a few thousand people every week bother to find out what ways George Bush, John McCain, and the Republican Party have pissed me off this time.

I may not be the genius I once believed I was but I’m smart enough to have figured that one out and fairly early in the game too. It’s helped that I have all these very smart readers and no matter what I write and no matter how brilliant I think I’ve been in writing it at least one of these very smart people will show up in the comments to tell me how wrong I am then they’ll proceed to prove it.

Consequently, for a long time now, it’s not been my intent to change your mind or tell you you’re wrong. My political posts have been like all my other posts, notes from the far side of my brain or, borrowing from Alan Alda, things I overheard while talking to myself. I post to get something off my chest or to see what I think I’m thinking in print so I can judge it objectively and decide if it’s something I really think and want to continue to think—I write to figure things out and you get to watch me scratching my head. Sometimes I’ll write a post because I believe I have something important to contribute to the general debate. Often it’s no so much an opinion I want to get out there or even a feeling, it’s a sentence, or a phrase, or a metaphor, and all I have to add amounts to a copy edit of things a lot of smarter and much better informed bloggers have already said about an issue or an event before I even heard about it.

And this is why I haven’t written a formal endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Nobody needs my opinion to help them make up their minds. Nobody’s going to change their minds because of my opinion. I don’t write under the assumption that readers are looking to me to them them how to think or how not to think and I’m always surprised when someone reacts as if that is in fact what I’ve tried to do—ram my opinion down their throat and make them like it.

I don’t expect you to agree with me. I don’t expect you to keep your disagreements to yourself. In fact, I want to know about it. I want you to put your disagreements in the comments—that goes for all you lurkers out there! Comment once in a while, I’m begging you!—but I do expect you to read what I write before you blow your top. And if you’re a regular reader I would hope that you’ve picked up on certain things about me and this blog and keep them in mind when you read a new post. One of those things to keep in mind when you read my political posts is that I’m a Democrat.

I’m loyal to the party before I’m loyal to any particular member of the party. I’m not a Yellow Dog Democrat in principle, it’s just been a long time since I’ve had the option of voting for any Republican for any office who’d be better at the job than a yellow dog. I’m not uncritical and I’m not unquestioning and I’m not particulary happy at the moment. There are times when I would rather that Lincoln Chaffee was back in the Senate and either of the Democratic Nelsons was out.

But then I remember that Chaffee was replaced by Sheldon Whitehouse and either Nelson would likely be replaced by a Right Wing Republican and I think, better to suffer the Nelsons’ Bush Doggedness than lose Patrick Lahey as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The point is that I want the Democrats to win the White House and pick up seats in the House and Senate and I do not care if the Democratic President is Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

I prefer Clinton to Obama because I know her better. She’s been my senator for seven years. She was the admirable, engaged, intelligent, activist wife of the only successful Democratic President I can remember. As far as my experience goes, Barack Obama might as well have fallen to earth in 2004. I like some things about him, can’t stand others. Same with Clinton. I’m sure I’ve criticized Obama more or struck a more skeptical note more often but that’s because I’ve had to spend more time trying to figure him out. I have a good idea of what kind of leader and politician Clinton is, for better and worse. I’m still not sure about Obama, although I am a little surer. He’s not enough different from her to win me over. He’s a better orator and not a Clinton. Otherwise he’s just a very bright liberal politician on the make who is arrogant enough or crazy enough to think he’s qualified for a job nobody’s qualified for.

Same as her.

Related posts: Kitchen designs, Meredith baxter, Over under, Easter ham, Orange show center for visionary art