Where and Why? ...
The question was asked by an Alabama Democratic Party activist in an e-mail exchange with other ADPAs, but it does seem to me to be a good one – not alone for Southern Democrats, for Democrats, liberals, leftists, or Americans. It's the unstated premise of much of my thinking as a Christian because it asks very well the major question about our human condition. However you voted in the presidential election, neither candidate would have delivered us from that condition. A massive defeat for George Bush would have raised hopes that John Kerry could not have delivered. Bush's narrow re-election leaves him with responsibility for conditions he's already been unable to control and, now, without the excuse of an"obstructionist" Democratic Party opposition in the Congress. If the economy tanks, it will clearly have been on his watch. If the struggle in Iraq goes badly, he has no one to blame but himself. He has made commitments to the social reactionaries in his party on which he simply cannot deliver. A"marriage" amendment to the Constitution? The President has no role to play in the process of amending the Constitution and it is extremely unlikely to find enactment. A revision of the tax code? He hasn't seen opposition like there will be at the thought of the middle-class taxpayer's loss of his household mortgage credit. Before these next four years have lapsed, George Bush will be asking:"Where are we going? And why am I in a handbasket?" He might have thought to ask earlier.