What I learned on 11/2/10

Having now lived through 42 national elections, I thought I had seen everything. Nope.

This year, for the first time in my experience, awakened voters (especially we seasoned citizens) fully realized that people we had trusted and elected had let us down. We said "No more!" to business as usual.

A percentage of us got off our butts at primary time and looked over the field of hopeful candidates. Then we actually worked for and went to the polls and voted for people we thought would not let us down. Certainly not always "attractive" candidates in the usual sense of the word. But we felt the usual attractive candidates were the ones who had failed us (like Harvard Law School grads who had made it to the U.S. Senate). Better to have a new kind of candidate, the kind we believed was telling us the truth - warts, if any, notwithstanding. We chose our nominees.

Ah, but here is the next new part. A lot of folks, largely the ones Angelo M. Codevilla called The Ruling Class, decided we had chosen our nominees stupidly and proceeded to trumpet their opinions far and wide. The opposition party instantly grabbed those opinions and made their negative political ads.

Sadly, many members of our party's electorate who had sat out the primary cycle, bought into the poor choice syndrome and bypassed the general election - or actually voted for our nominee's opponent.

Some fresh, new candidate choices lost. Would they have been good leaders? No one knows. But I remember when candidate Ronald Reagan was considered a low-class Hollywood type, not appropriate for high political office! And we all have read that self-educated Abraham Lincoln was considered a bumpkin log-splitter.

I may or may not live to see my 43rd national election. But I would hope that when it does roll around, all the smart guys work for and vote for their choice of candidate. When the primary winner emerges (your choice or your neighbor's) support them or just change parties, but spare the world your learned opinion.