“The most important election since the last one and until the next one.”  Often that is about what it comes down to, even when the results are significant.  The two Bush elections fall into this category.  I can understand the first Bush election as a hazed vote for an unholy combination of his two predecessors and a cast of Reasonable, albeit Sexless, Respectables, which he at any rate lost in the popular vote and in Florida.  I can explain the re-election as a stalling at just about 50 percent of a falling 90 percent September 12 “Demanded” approval rating, stalled by rehashing some Vietnam War era battles against the “Not Bush” candidate, and tapping the cultural battleground against gay marriage.  It may sound like “Sour Grapes” in the true Aesopean definition of the term — Rationalization that the grapes you did not get are probably sour anyways — but as I surveyed the landscape following Bush’s re-election, I saw the imminent future for the Bush Administration as popularly about to run aground, with a disasterous 2006 mid-term election.

Looking at the traditional years which get to be defined as “Realignment” elections — 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932, and the either/and/or twins of 1968 and 1980, and I will toss in the significant election of 1876, and pushing aside the issue of which political party is entreated with having the “upper hand”, I think three categories fit their meaning — above the “most important since the last one and until the next one.”  Foundational, Fundamental, Existential.  The categories might be a bit interchangable and blur around a bit, but they seem good at explaining some stakes.  The elections of Jefferson and Jackson were “foundational” and defined the political traditions by which the United States political system has engaged itself.  [Including, I suppose, the full frontal Genocide of the Native American.]  America faced an existential threat in 1860 and 1932, and the fact that we still have a reasonably identifiable nation testifies to why Lincoln and Roosevelt sit at the top of the floating “Presidential Rankings”.  1896 and 1968 , I guess 1968 as re-affirmed in 1980 with a significant mutation, are left as matters where Americans set a course against a backdrop of rapid cultural changes.  Depending on when you ask me, I will stick the conclusion agreement to the 1876 election as either Fundamental or rather bleakly Foundational — the conclusion of Reconstruction and the cementation of the Disenfranchisement of black Americans from civic and social life through Jim Crowe and Segregation.

I gather that the current election fits somewhere beyond a matter of one set of players over the other and short of a question as to whether that question of whether the United States will continue to exist.    But I do get the feeling if we continue to be misgoverned as we have been, and if we continue under the framework of policy options proferred over the past few decades, that might just be around the corner — Alan Greenspan’s “Once in a Century” explanation of the Wall Street drop failed to be curbed as the nation wallows in cultural debris, as well that series of international issues not taken seriously and a failure to find our new role in the World against an unsettling World back-drop, as well never seriously proceeding to transition to a post-petrol energy source and economy.  It is all very disturbing, isn’t it?

But beyond the matter of ceasing to dig a hole, what this election portends is this relentless insulting of our senses.  The McCain / Palin campaign is a post-modern affair, and an assault on the nation’s Intellect — It is Them Against those Paying Attention’s Lying Eyes.   The foundation of the campaign is a Lie — and they have bluntly stated that it doesn’t much matter that it is–, and when called on it, they brandish an assault of “Elitism” against them.  “Elitism” has been defined down.  The question at stake for this nation does appear to be a sort of “Are We Idiots?” or “Do we have the attention spans of Gnats?”, which as the basis of an election is a bit disconcerting.  The up-shot?  Maybe I’ll get to that later.  I don’t want to depress myself right now.

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