Election Day Angst

Actually, I'm not nearly as anxious about today's election as I was in 2004. Kathryn Jean Lopez has an interesting post on the Corner that helps to explain the difference. Evidently, she wrote in 2004 that the election that year was so important, she would almost be willing to concede the 2008 race to the Democrats in order to win in 2004. I think I felt exactly the same way at the time.

In 2004, I felt the race was essentially a referendum on whether a U.S. president could take aggressive steps, up to and including waging war, in order to combat the Islamic extremism that was threatening to destroy, over time, Western civilization. John Kerry, in my mind, represented capitulation to the Islamofascist threat in its various forms, including the deferring of judgment in the matter to the pinstriped pantywaists that control the U.N.

This year, I don't feel that Americans are voting on the anything as monumental as all that. As a matter of fact, if Obama wins, it's not clear what the American people will have voted "for." I specifically don't think a majority of voters want socialism, even if that's what Obama has up his sleeve. While Obama's election would carry with it a raft of bad consequences for the country, I don't think it would tell us a great deal about the electorate beyond the obvious fact that Americans are very confused about the state of the economy and worried about the future.

Indeed, that's probably the best summary I could give of this election. People are confused, worried, and angry about the sense of crisis that's gripping the country. They don't really know who or what to blame. Obama is superficially a more attractive choice because he advocates "change." McCain is reassuring at some level, but it's never been clear exactly what he stands for. So it really does all boil down to "change" and "hope": roll the dice on "change" and "hope" we still have a country four years from now.