So where are we now?

Quite the eventful week. A few quick takes on the election: mostly bad of course, since it's no secret I think elevating BHO to the presidency will have untoward consequences for the nation, and that I also regret what this outcome says about our nation and its priorities. But! Ever the optimist, there are a few silver linings to be had if one but pauses to look for them.

The bad:
I'll refrain from even talking about policy here, since frankly that's been exercised over and over for the past three months or so and there's nothing really to add, and it's obviously too late even if I had something new to contribute. But there's two things I think are especially unfortunate.

1. This outcome rewards past bad actions and therefore encourages future occurances of same.

What bad actions? The frenzied, paranoid, repulsive wallowing in a simmering broth of incoherent hate which has represented so much of Democratic opposition policy the past eight years. The years-long campaign at the expense of governing. The Machiavellian disregard for laws (eg. campaign finance) and civility, and the variously successful attempts to suppress free speech which the BHO campaign and its apologists and sycophants in the press have so enthusiastically embraced.

Leaving aside any actual policy outcomes, it would be preferable in a healthy and mature republic to have had repudiated all these bad actions. Is it even conceivable that Democrats will suddenly and unprovokedly abandon all these wildly successful strategies in future elections, or are we more or less permanently to be subjected to this?

2. What the outcome says about us.

I'm tempted to simply overlook the pedestrian observation that the average American doesn't pay much attention, as has been evidenced in countless Jay Leno man-in-the-street type interviews where a staggering number of people can't name the vice-president, etc. But, at the risk of piling on, I'll simply point out that if a Democratic congress has a lower approval rating than George Bush, the logic which was employed to justify sending more Democrats to power in congress simply eludes me. I rather suspect that a non-trivial proportion of actual voters are entirely unaware that Democrats have been running both houses of congress for the past two years.

Also, I must confess that I simply can't grasp how Democrats are given higher marks for how they would handle the economy (and that BHO was probably carried to victory substantially on the expectation that he would solve our current economic woes). Sure, they care more than Republicans. But what are the major business-related planks of Democratic policy? Higher taxes on rich people and corporations. Higher taxes on capital gains, even if that results in a reduction of taxes paid to the treasury, as a matter of fairness. "Ending tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas." Protectionism.

All of these are gut-level reactions which utterly fail when put into practice, at least if their intent is to create jobs and economic growth. I'm sure I'll have ample leisure over the next four-to-eight years to go on about this at length, but for now I'll simply summarize that anti-growth policies do not help to create jobs or wealth, no matter how much we want them to.

The advent of the BHO presidency suggests that we've become totally unmoored and unserious, and we are collectively willing to overlook the fact that wishing things in great and profound earnestness doesn't make them so.

The good:
For a variety of reasons, having a black president will be good for the country. I would rather our first black president have been Condoleezza Rice (which I would have enthusiastically supported), because I think her policy instincts are vastly preferable to those of BHO. But the outcome of the election will at least serve to prove that America isn't just a great seething maze of racism, as some [coughJesseJacksoncough] racialist opportunists [coughAlSharptoncough] have made careers by insisting. Anything that marginalizes Sharpton et al, or at least quiets their rantings, does serve some practical good.

Further along those lines, now that we've demonstrated America's non-racist bona fides, perhaps we can all start to come to agreement that any form of race-based discrimination is bad, and we can start to see affirmative action relegated to the pantheon of those noble programs which have succeeded so thoroughly as to have therefore outlived their usefulness.

One other thing: the Democrats will now have to actually govern instead of simply trying to sabotage every element of public policy whose success might have tangentally afforded some credit to George Bush. Transforming the Democrats in Washington from a bunch of shrill bleating children advocating ridiculously bad policy at every turn and confident in their minority status preventing them from absorbing any actual responsibility, into a bunch of shrill bleating children with bad policy ideas who can now scarcely avoid responsibility for the actions of government, may sober them up just a little. Not much, in all likelihood, but perhaps enough to avoid the most pernicious of their own ideas.

Lastly, the Republicans may now understand that the last two elections are, more than just bad timing from having an economic meltdown in the eighth year of an administration, also a referendum on a party which failed to adhere to many of its own principles. Small government, fiscal responsibility, and the ability to treat the economy seriously and in a grownup fashion are not characteristics of George Bush's administration nor of the Republicans in congress in recent years.

The United States has survived worse than this, and will survive BHO as well, no matter how foolish and ill-considered his policies will likely be. Such good as can come of this should be embraced and advanced at every opportunity. So smile, be brave, and be well.