Thoughts on Election Day

1. It almost seems surreal that we are finally going to decide this thing. I know I'm not alone in feeling like this contest has been going on forever?

2. It looks like it will be an easy win for Obama and we may have an anti-climactic ending by early afternoon.

3. I'm wondering how long it will take for the disillusion to set in on the behalf of the Obama movement. He is after all, merely a man, though extremely gifted and talented, and the challenges facing this land are of such a great magnitude. He's bound to disappoint and perhaps sooner rather than later. If you are looking for the Messiah, I believe he's already been here and is still at work but he's not running for President.

4. As someone who really truly is by nature a conservative person I find myself thinking along similar lines as Ross Douthat, another blogger I read daily when he writes all of this:

Conservatism in the United States faces a series of extremely knotty problems at the moment. How do you restrain the welfare state at a time when the entitlements we have are broadly popular, and yet their design puts them on a glide path to insolvency? How do you respond to the socioeconomic trends - wage stagnation, social immobility, rising health care costs, family breakdown, and so forth - that are slowly undermining support for the Reaganite model of low-tax capitalism? How do you sell socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle that often perceives social conservatism as intolerant? How do you transform an increasingly white party with a history of benefiting from racially-charged issues into a party that can win majorities in an increasingly multiracial America? etc. Watching the McCain campaign, you'd barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. But there were people in the Bush Administration who did understand the situation facing the Right, and set out to wrestle with these challenges - and as a result, George W. Bush had a real chance (especially given the political capital he enjoyed after 9/11) to establish a model for center-right governance in the post-Reagan era. That he failed is by no means the greatest tragedy of the last eight years, but it is a tragedy nonetheless - for conservatives, and for the country.I'm not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out. But for now, as America goes to the polls, I find myself stuck thinking about the lost opportunities of the last eight years, and the possibility that they may not come round again.

Maybe the Reagan model is obsolete as the world has changed. Maybe the left has the better ideas for how the economy should function at this point in time, just like Reagan had the right ideas 30 years ago. I'm willing to give them a shot. Socially, I wonder along similar lines...how do you explain that you think traditional values are actually better when for the past 40 years it seems like everything progressive has worked out just fine and some traditional values seem to fly in the face of science, man's best attempt at understanding the Universe. I'm not ready to throw out the totality of 6000 years of collective human wisdom simply because it's been proven wrong a few times (i.e., racism, etc.) and because we've managed to remedy a lot of the costs and negative externalities of the choices of our parents' generation.

Couple that with the idea that an Obama election assures us of an undivided Congress and White House. I fear this nearly as much as I fear extending the policies of the first six years of Bush's time in the White House. Look, the fact is Burke was right, power corrupts. Both sides have their excesses, and I'm sure the Democrats are going to make some mistakes during their time in power. I think the record of my lifetime proves a pretty valuable example of the fact that our government charts the best course when the Democrats and Republicans share power. Reagan/Bush and the Democratic Congress in the 80s and early 90s and the Clinton/Gingrich years from '94 through the end of his term. (Even the last two years of W. Bush, which people will one day look back on and see in a much more positive light.)

5. With all of that in mind, I'm two for two in presidential elections. Here's hoping I can continue batting 1.000%. A crazy world indeed, ain't it? An exciting one too!