A Vote for Disillusionment

No matter who wins the presidential election today, I’ll still be disillusioned. More accurately, I was never really illusioned in the first place because I’ve been trying to be realistic. It kills me to see the Romney ad with the woman jogging and thinking, “Hope and change were just campaign slogans.” Gasp! Next you’ll tell me “I like Ike” was just a slogan.

Yeah, no shit “hope and change” were campaign slogans. I was optimistic in 2008 about Obama but I never thought he would wave some kind of magic wand and solve all the country’s problems. I voted for Obama then and I’m voting for him tomorrow but even in the giddiness of 2008, I knew he would run into the same problems every president does when the party ends and the hangover starts. No president can live up to his billing during the campaign and that’s not necessarily a failure.

So in the past few years, when I would see the snarky bumper stickers and hear the snarky comments saying, “Where’s your hope and change now?” I would just think, “Yes, those were slogans and the reality is more complicated and cannot fit into a sound bite.”

I’m not a total cynic because I do see some evidence of hope and change: Bin Laden is dead, there is healthcare reform, we are taking slow steps to economic recovery and gay marriage is more plausible than it was at the start of the decade. But I never believed any presidential candidate when they promised us all ponies. I do believe this country will march toward progress but it will be a clusterfuck at times watching it happen. Washington runs like a cliquey, back-stabbing, petty high school — the way it always has — and there’s no reason to think it’s going to stop anytime soon. I believe that this country is wonderful overall but in individual snapshots, it can sometimes be deflating to look at.

I’m not all that wise in this area but I do try to take a look at the long sweep of history rather than the momentary horse race of polls and pundits. I try to look at the big picture when people say things like, “This country is the most divided it’s ever been” (Really? Even more than during the Civil War?) or “This is the most important presidential election ever” (we’ve been having the most important election ever every four years since 2000).

No matter who wins today, the Union will survive because it’s built to do so. For Americans who didn’t like the Bush administration, we still made it through. For Americans who didn’t like the Obama administration, we all made it through the first term. Even in disillusionment, there can be a kind of wary hope. The key for me is not getting too high or too low.