Old Tybee Ranger Predicts

So the word is that Obama is a poor finisher, always polling four to six percent more than the actual vote. I don't think that matters tomorrow. Barack Obama will become our President-elect in a close election. Come January, Obama and his leadership on Capitol Hill, may begin a dedicated move toward socialism, a failed economic philosphy that will lead the nation down the road to serfdom. On the other hand, he campaigned as a centrist, and could very well govern as one. Regardless, we will have four years to form an opinion before casting another presidential vote.

The one certainty in all of this is that the the nation and national conscience will endure through the political change. But this new politics and national introspection may lead the United States to embark on its own kind of cultural focus and revival much like that of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918 -1933. Please understand that it is a loose parallel. I have no expectation whatsoever that the experience will devolve into national socialism, as in Nazi. Quite the opposite, I see it as a recovery of the innovative spirit we seem to have lost over the past ten to twenty years.

And so I'll put politics aside until 2008 - maybe 2012. I'm not going to let the outcome of tomorrow's election affect my world. Instead, I'll look forward to the cultural evolution. I'll also pour a glass of ice cold gin and, as I often do, look into history. My baby and I will darken the room, find some comfortable chairs at a small table, and listen to this:



The girls, the cars, the clubs, the hot jazz, the dancing. I can envision some couple at the Berlin Cabaret in 1930 thinking about the States and its Roaring Twenties and American jazz, enjoying it all, with no thought to the political future. Unlike them, I can watch the culture unfold knowing that it rests on two centuries of constitutional law and republican principles. Endurance is on my side, left, right, and center. We are really blessed by God with the privilege of choosing our leaders. Let us look forward and enjoy.