Presidential Elections

I barely remember anything from 1992. I was seven. I remember being ecstatic over my brother's enjoyment of his birthday gift, a coloring book. I remember being very disappointed when the activity sheets in my work folder at school piled up so much that Ms. Kolbe just took them all out and threw them away so that I thought I was in a lot of trouble. Amazed, I continued receiving A+ report cards.

I do have one brief memory regarding the election that year. My parents were really pumped about it. And I can clearly recall waking up on what must have been November 5th, 1992, and asking my mom, “Did he win!?” of course referring to Bill Clinton, to which my mother smiled and nodded with a simple “yes” in answer.

At Tusculum Elementary that year, there had been a school wide mock election. Teachers had dragged their classes into the cafeteria and had one by one gotten a vote out of every single child. On election day it had been announced that Clinton had won with a vast majority. Bush had come in second, and Perot was dead last. I can remember making funny Perot faces at my best friend, Candy Wilson. We'd press our ears forward and cross our eyes. It was really only a shade off of the monkey faces we were also rather good at.

So when I woke up that morning and found out that Bill Clinton was president of the United States, I was excited but I didn't really comprehend what that meant. I felt like everything would always be that way. Predetermined and true and good. My parents were smart people, and lets face it, those elementary school kids voted like their parents would, so did I. But my parents were smart, good people, who were right and true. Of course Bill Clinton would win the election. Because good, smart people supported him.

And that sureness carried into my next brush with presidential elections in 1996. My Dad was taking me to Glendale Middle School then. Every morning we'd drive to school past the governors mansion listening to talk radio. My Dad would do this funny impression of Bob Dole that made him sound like he had a stick up his butt, and I'd laugh. “Baaaaaaaab Doooooooole” was not going to win the election. No way. It was going to be Bill Clinton, and it was. We were good people, we were smart, and Bill Clinton was our choice. He was the right choice. And I was 11.

In 1999, I saw television footage of George Bush Jr. I laughed. There was news footage of him getting off a plane and waving. How silly, I thought. I've never even heard of him.
Fast forward to the year 2000. I was 15, and I was a nutcase about forensics. I knew at this point that it was a ridiculously close election, and that George Bush Jr was an arrogant, goofy looking little dude.
Ben Cameron: “Why, girls, why would you ever vote for Al Gore?”
“Abortion!” It shot out of my mouth.
“Economic policy!” My best friend Blair shouted.
“The middle class!”
“The environment!” We were so eager to sound knowlegeable. Eager to have Ben Cameron think we were. Ben was the best speaker on our whole speech team, and was a senior, and a Republican. He worshiped God, Reagan, and the Constitution. Probably in that order.

Blair and I went around the school in our home-made screen tees that said “Stay Out of the Bushes! More with Gore!” When the debates were on, I watched fervently. I just couldn't understand the close numbers. And this time it wasn't just my parents' vote that mattered. It was Ben and Blair and I and the whole adult world who could actually vote. And it was public policy decisions and speeches and poor people. It was my trip to the First Amendment Center that year. It was a whole bunch of yuppie religious people who hated Bill Clinton because he had committed adultery, which had nothing at all to do with how the country had faired. It was the religious right at my church and my school who I noticed for the first time couldn't separate church from state or anything else because they were so sure that they were right because God told them they were.

That made me angry for the first time back then. I watched the impeachment hearing and couldn't understand how it could be legal for someone to be fired from their job for cheating on their wife. When the election was over, months after it had been held, I was so disappointed and so mad that such a polarizing figure had been elected that I really became liberal.

Which is why it doesn't make any sense that I went to the most conservative private college in all of Nashville, right? While there, I was spending my time becoming more and more blue.

“What if Hillary Clinton ran for president?” The girls who were suite mates with me were, like most people at the school, ridiculously conservative.
“Like, no body would vote for her, duh.” Karen was blonde.
“Yeah, maybe you're right, Karen. How could anyone vote for her. She's a woman.” Jenna was not blonde, but was unfortunately close-minded.
“I just hate her.” Karen flipped the channel. From my seat on the other side of the room, I started to smirk.
“How could anyone vote for a woman?”
“Wait, Jenna, you wouldn't even vote for a woman if... okay, say she's more qualified and stuff.” My smirk got bigger. We were in for a real enlightening argument here.
“No. Absolutely not.” Jenna crossed her arms from her seat on the couch.
“Why?” I finally piped up, trying to kill my smirk.
“Because,” Jenna intoned, “women are emotional, they have periods, they just can't handle the kinds of policy decisions that men can. Plus, you have to take into account all these foreign relations guys. Hello? Are they going to respect the US if a woman is running our country?”
Why are you in college? I should have said. You're a woman. Why don't you go home and get pregnant and fulfill your purpose as a female, right?
“Would you vote for a black man?” I asked, but she huffed and grabbed the remote.

I went with my friend Miriam from Iowa to a Micahel Moore concert where everyone chanted about turning the state blue even though we knew it would never happen.
I put a Kerry sign in my dorm room window, and within twenty minutes the head resident stopped by to see who owned the sign.
“I just thought it was interesting, is all!”
Bitch.
I bought a sticker for the back of my car that said “God is not a Republican or a Democrat” because I generally went through hell at school. Somebody wrote in paint pen all over my car, and and somebody else printed out a bunch of anti-American garbage about John Kerry and taped it to my window with the sign.

“You know you're killing babies when you vote for him, right?”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that logic?
“Morality is important to me in a leader. I don't know what kind of leader you want, you know, as a Christian, but murder will always be wrong. How can you sit there and support abortion?”
Well frankly I don't know that I wouldn't have one!

It was like a personal attack every day. And even as I woke up at 4am to go onto the quad and plaster the statuesque mascot with Kerry stickers, I felt the rise of everyone against me.
That year when Bush won again, I cried really hard. Web addresses were suddenly difficult to write since I declared the letter W dead to me. But seriously, the world just wasn't simple any more for me. The rules about smart, caring people were becoming completely blurred. Everything was conditional. It really sucked. It felt like there was this weight crushing me. It wasn't just my religion doing what I perceived as turning against me, it was this impenetrable religious ignorance that divided everyone and, at least at my school, isolated me from everyone else.

Today it's the year 2008, and I am too old now to assume that the good guys always win. The spell of childhood assumption has been broken too many times. People in fairy tales don't have to pay bills. And I think when I woke up and saw that Barack Obama was going to be the President of the United States, I cried this time because the weight had been lifted. Most of my adult political consciousness had been characterized by being an underdog. And the faces of these kids at my center saying “a black man is President and I really can do anything” and the hope for people, and the faith in intrinsic good and second chances feels so strong right now.

Thank God for that, right there. This year was the first year I've known I could feel like that about this country.

Candy Wilson became politically apathetic. She smoked a lot of pot in college and I don't know, but I think she might be apathetic about a lot of things, although I'm sure she'd still think Ross Perot impressions are funny.
Blair is still blue. She graduated from college with a triple major and now works in New York City. Economic policy and the environment are still important to her, although her employer does primarily publish Republican works of non-fiction.
Miriam from Iowa married a Republican and they both now make loads of money. Which is why I'm not sure about her blue/red status. She was always wary of Michael Moore, and she actually allowed her husband to serve a Ronald Reagan sheet cake at her wedding, so who knows anymore.
Ben Cameron is still as red as red can be. He married into a both political and religious family, and now occasionally has fun working on Republican campaigns. He may still possibly carry around a pocket Constitution.
The head resident at my old dorm was eventually responsible for my expulsion from said conservative college. I know I'm still bitter, but sometimes I wish I could talk to her about it just to let her know how much that one thing impacted my life. Because its always that one thing that makes the difference. I know that now in my line of work. And frankly thats what this whole freakin blog is about. Because its always that one little thing, isn't it?