Election 2008: Truth and Fiction
With this election almost two weeks behind us and shrinking quickly in our rearview mirror, here are the things we need to remember about the outcome.
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Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
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Virtually all the flu in the United States this season is resistant to the leading antiviral drug Tamiflu, and scientists and health officials are trying to figure out why.
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Everything, it seems, has grown worse here. The recession started earlier and its bite has been deeper. Housing prices have fallen by as much as 50 percent. Bank shares have plummeted by more than 90 percent. Unemployment is approaching 10 percent. The roots of Ireland's fall date to more than 20 years ago, when a clutch of economists, politicians and civil servants put their heads together in this very pub and planted the philosophical seeds for the Irish economic miracle.
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Phil Maymin, an assistant professor of finance and risk engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, has crunched 50 years worth of stock-market data — along with more than 5,000 hit songs. And he says he’s found an inverse correlation between stock-market volatility and whether the hot music of the moment is frenetic or steady.
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At WaMu, getting the job done meant lending money to nearly anyone who asked for it — the force behind the bank’s meteoric rise and its precipitous collapse this year in the biggest bank failure in American history.
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Across the nation, the ultimate symbol of suburban success has become one more reminder of the economic meltdown, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters finding a surplus of deserted pools in which to perfect their acrobatic aerials.
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And Favreau is right, Gerson's speech for Bush that September 20 was one of the great speeches in American history. But it must be noted here that with that speech the discord between speech and speaker has never been more pronounced, for we have come to know that Gerson's boss never fully grasped the power of words. With an exalting script, Gerson could make George W. Bush sound like Winston Churchill for an hour. But it is Jon Favreau's task and his gift that he is able to make his boss — a fellow who has been known to write a sentence or two on his own — sound like Barack Obama.
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Ever wonder who came up with the order of numbers on a telephone? Ever wonder why it isn’t the same as those on a calculator, or a keyboard, ascending from lowest to highest? After all, adding machines and mechanical calculators were around for at least a few hundred years before the invention of the pushbutton phone.
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You can search for magazines through Google Book Search.
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Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one.
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The story of how voting patterns in the 2008 election were essentially determined 85 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. It's also a story about how soil science relates to political science, by way of historical chance.
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The National Catharsis of Obama
I continue to be amazed at the emotion that’s being expressed this week in light of the election of Barack Obama. There are plenty of people who are upset, frustrated, or scared. I can understand the first two, but I think fear is an inappropriate response to this week’s events.
There are also many people who are feeling a sense of pride, which I suppose I can understand. Certainly, the election of Obama is an historic moment for this country. But does Obama’s election really make America better? If we would have elected McCain instead of Obama, would we be less of a nation?
Let me step back for a moment. I grew up in a middle class suburb in so-called middle America in the 1980s and 1990s. I fully understand that racism still exists in this world, both in a personal sense and in an institutional sense. But, for me, I grew up in a world in which race wasn’t an issue. I grew up around people of all kinds of races — black, white, Asian, Latino. I went to school with kids of all races. The top 10 graduates in my high school class included students of Filipino, Chinese, Indian, African, and European ethnicities. I’ve never thought of people in terms of their race.
I grew up in a world where I was fully confident that I’d see an African-American president in my lifetime. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when. I was certain that it would be relatively soon, too. I can remember Jesse Jackson’s campaigns in 1984 and 1988, respectively. I remember seeing Carol Mosley Braun become a U.S. Senator in Illinois and go on to run for president. I’ve voted for Alan Keyes twice for two different offices.
Would we have felt less proud of America if we hadn’t elected Barack Obama on Tuesday? I hope not. I didn’t vote against Obama because of his race. His race has never been an issue to me. He’s clearly an intelligent, skillful, authentic politician who has well-intentioned ideas about how he thinks America should look. None of those things are in any way tied to his race. I voted against him because I thought his opponent would make for a better candidate. Why would that choice have made America any less proud of itself?
I actually find that kind of insulting. To suggest that unless we elected this man as the first black president that somehow America would have remain tainted by institutional racism is absurd.
Have we now exorcised the demons of racism in our country? Can we now move on? Am I allowed to shed my “white guilt”? Will African-Americans now begin to fully recognize the blessings of liberty?
Let’s be realistic. A lot of people feel good about this election. And I hope that Obama has a presidency that truly leaves America a better nation. But with that said, there’s a very good chance that Obama will have mixed success. Despite his promises, he’ll have a fair number of setbacks and failures. His best intentions won’t be sufficient to make the kind of change that he’s talked so much about … and that’s okay.
I don’t feel any better or worse about America or myself after the election. I’m glad we live in a country that allows anyone to become president. I’m glad that we have a peaceful transfer of power. I’m glad that my sense of personal and national identity isn’t tied up in a candidates’ race.
I grew up knowing Ronald Reagan as the president. My lasting impression was that our president believed that America was an exceptional nation that has been given a special opportunity to bring freedom and hope to the world. That’s how I will forever look at Reagan.
My sons will grow up with Barack Obama as their model for what a president is. My hope is that their impression of Obama will have nothing to with him being African-American. I hope that they will see a man who sees American much as I remember Reagan seeing America.
Campaign Ends, Governing Begins
That felt like the longest presidential campaign in the history of presidential campaigns. It literally started right after the 2006 mid-term elections and culminated on Tuesday night.
I’m still recovering from working 35 of the first 57 hours of this week. But I’m starting to wrap my brain around what the election means or will mean, now that the task of governing begins.