Happy New Year!

We have been away for a couple of weeks trying to put our heads on straight, or at least the best we can. In a couple of moments we will get to the first of several posts which have built up over our extended holiday break. We appreciate the support from Wandering Gentile readers, and we hope that your New Year is happy, healthy, and prosperous. We also hope that the minor alterations we have made to our look will make your experience better, and of course, something which you will wish to share with every person on the planet.

Thanks for your support!

Gil.

As the Republican Party Turns

If there is any consolation in the recession, it will be the death of the stereotype of Americans as loud, bigoted types who think Taco Bell is a major player in Mexican telecommunications, and let Rush Limbaugh do their thinking for them.

To be honest, Americans are pretty sick of persons living down to that stereotype, as well. Their ranks in legislative leadership havee been winnowed to the rural South. With this ebb, the chance of the United States developing Concentration Camps has diminished spectacularly. Now if we could get rid of Mr. Broun down in Athens, Georgia,...the one who has the conspiracy theories about Obama's new Gestapo and makes Dale Gribble seem sane, by God there may even be hope for Georgia politics. (Motto: Legislating Badly since 1733, and you can't do squat outside of Atlanta!)

One does not speak of the worthy Republican opposition of Olympia Snowe, John McCain, or Sam Brownback. While one finds points where our opinions may diverge wildly, individuals of this character and integrity are still capable and competent participants in civil discourse. When speaking of the Paul Brouns, the Tom Tancredos, and the Sarah Palins, one is forced to wade through a miasma of talk-radio fueled paranoids who see cabals where there are none, and fraud when their anti-civil-libertarian agendas fail to be rammed down the throats of the American people.

Did Republicans learn nothing from Al Gore and Cynthia McKinney? The tactics were identical.

This is not 1972 where Republicans used a large and fully functional cabal to retain power against the Democrats. In the case of Nixon versus McGovern, a cabal was overkill, a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito on a 72" television screen. McGovern was incapable of mounting a serious challenge.

Thanks to the cabal being discovered, Democrats could have trotted a trained pig out and won in 1976. One suspects that the results may have been somewhat better than Jimmy Carter.

Democrats had their Nixon in Bill Clinton. Nixon was spectaculaly unsympathetic. Clinton felt the citizen's pain a little too well, and in the case of Monica Lewinsky, got caught being a little bit too curious, using the wrong appendage to see if she had a sore throat. Plenty of people were willing to respect Nixon, but no one wanted to like him. The opposite was true of Clinton.

The excesses of both administrations led to the rise of a weak president from the opposing party.

George W. Bush has become the Republican Jimmy Carter. This time the Democrats actually learned something from the Carter debacle of the late seventies. Hillary Clinton as president could have brought the whole Carter script with an all-new cast in glorious 1080p HDTV. She has the set of insecurities which made Carter in ineffective President and a spectacularly effective Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and Democracy. She will do very well as a Secretary of State.

This is not to call Obama the same transitional figure for Democrats that Reagan was for a generation of Republican voters. Yet. But Obama's skill set is effectively the same as Reagan's. The one who communicates best wins every time. The victory is spectacular when competing with a party mired in an image of dour ineptitude.

The haranguing rhetoric of nannyist Democrats hounding people about safety or paternalist Republicans interjecting their displeasure with behavior which is best kept private were equivalent vote-losers for their respective parties. The tranquil, optimistic voices of Reagan and Obama transformed most of the rabid opposition into sober voices of disagreement, and swayed the ambivalent.

Moving forward, our nation will reclaim its "inside" voice and optimistic tone. We can no longer afford to swagger, screaming that others should "bring it on." A majority of Americans have expressed a faith in rising from humble conditions, and with the blessing of being American, realizing any objective seen fit to pursue. We just call that America.

For many it is a triumph well earned and too long denied.