Thanks for talking sense

Posted by Frank Gerjevic

Posted: October 30, 2008 - 4:15 pm

Comments (0) |

First, thanks to all of you who accepted the invitation to talk sense to me. Time is precious, and you spent some of yours to join the debate.

Second, a few responses to some of your responses.

A few of you seemed to think that because the Daily News endorsed Barack Obama for president, that I couldn’t be serious about being undecided.

The fact is, members of the editorial board don’t march in lockstep with one another. We have disagreements. The endorsement is unequivocally the institutional stand of the Daily News, but that doesn’t mean everyone at the paper - or even everyone on the editorial board - signs on.

A few others took this for a ploy to gin up letters, commentary and page views. Fair enough. But here’s the deal - the invitation was honest, as is my undecided status (as of this writing, 2:40 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 30). And the point was less about how I’m going to vote than about the arguments that you made for or against either John McCain or Barack Obama.

The late Suzan Nightingale was a writer and Daily News columnist who set the standard for the kind of conversation we were trying for with this invitation. When she wrote, it was as if you were talking over the back fence with an intelligent, good neighbor. Disagree, challenge each other, laugh, spar with words, score points. Shake hands. I don’t know if I held up my end of that deal, but most of you did.

Finally, a few thoughts about the election.

Is Barack Obama an elitist, whatever that means? Maybe, but I don’t much care. What matters isn’t whether or he can bowl or knock back a shot and a beer but whether he genuinely cares about the people who do. And the people who don’t. I like his calm; I don’t like the occasionial drift to messiah mode. I’m too old to think that any candidate for president knows the way to the promised land.

Would the McCain/Palin ticket take us closer to theocracy? I don’t think so. True believers always overreach, and as one staunch Republican friend told me, America has a genius for self-correction. By all means keep a wary eye on those who claim to channel God, but don’t get the vapors every time Palin mentions prayer.

Obama won’t make the United States a socialist nation. Bumping the highest individual tax rate back to where it was before George W. Bush hardly makes us Sweden. And that Democratic majority in Congress? There are some Blue Dog Democrats in there too.

Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president of the United States? Maybe, depending on what the job turns out to be for her.

Is Sarah Palin qualified to be president of the United States. No. I like most of her work as governor, like her gumption, like the fact that she’s starting to slip the campaign handlers’ leash and striking out on her own, don't like the bogus "real America" division.

The world looks scarier than it did in 2004. But then history gives perspective. The world has looked a whole lot scarier before. Try 1861, 1914, 1929, 1932, 1939, 1941. For that matter, 1776. Let's hope 2008 stays way out of that league.

I think about some pictures I saw when I was searching the photo archive for candidate shots. There were Obama and McCain together at ground zero in Manhattan.

This is an election, not a memorial service. We can't keep McCain and Obama together.

But I go back to the Nightingale inspiration. Whatever the outcome Tuesday, whether we’re delighted or disappointed, we’ll still need to join hands.

- Frank Gerjevic

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