March 10, 2000

As I write, election returns are trickling in, but I won't know final results until after this column's deadline. Actually, that's okay because I doubt that anything earth-shattering will come out of this election: Since our rights and wallets haven't been completely lost yet, we're still dozing through their slow erosion.

Reverting to my family's pedagogic roots compels me to ask the schoolteacher's inevitable question, "What did we learn?" We already knew democracy fosters a range of campaigning from passionate debate to character assassination. Unfortunately, Tuesday's ballot was tainted with a particularly nasty residue of battles. Such rancor is not new to the republic, but increasingly elections seem to be weighted with more personal attacks than political issues and more groups wanting to issue edicts than individuals fighting for their principles.

Even the propositions' arguments failed to rise above warring financial interests. I realize most things come down to economics, but did any of the various initiative campaigns present any dialogues (or even monologues!) about the proposals' compatibility with the most basic American value of personal choice?

Other than with the generally ignored Libertarians, even feel-good initiatives failed to get a rise out of those apathetic about threats to their private lives. Maybe self-absorbed citizens and the mainstream media stars will finally care when government nannies pick up their newborns from hospitals to have certified "experts" raise them in public nurseries. What else can be concluded when the main thing heard against Proposition 28 was that it would be a shame to lose all that money from the cigarette tax?

Hey, everybody is free to promote pet causes, or even righteous callings, but why don't they just take the campaign money and use it to establish private organizations to fulfill their missions?

These questions were bouncing around in my big Irish head while voting. In fact, they so distracted me I made an error and had to start over with a second ballot. On top of that, it had taken me four stops to find my new polling place, getting soaked with rain at each stop.

Still, with all our current problems, voting is always worth the effort because I love this country--so much so that I've crossed it several times by train, which is the best way to see it. And like poet Theodore Roethke, I would always "stay up half the night to see the land I love."

© 2000 Cynthia Hahn