11 March 2011

Bush vs. Gore

Last night, I tackled my second open mic at Story Club.  It was a bit of a different vibe than the one I did in January -- lots of friends and loved ones in the audience this time, including my sister Ariel, visiting from Michigan.  My good friends JH Palmer and Johanna Stein were this month's featured readers and they were amazing, as always.  

The theme was "Religion" and I like to think this touches a bit on the notion of losing it:

There are some things you just know at a very early age.  Some people become Cubs fans, falling asleep beneath Blue and Red pennants and dreaming of the World Series.  Some people are Catholics, lulled by the incense and hymns and Hail Marys.  Some people are outlaws – pilfering gum and Girl Scout dues before they learn long division. 

Me – I knew from the time I hit second grade that I was a Democrat. 

As the 1984 primaries heated up, I learned that Jesse Jackson was running for president.  This sounded awesome.  Not only would we get rid of Ronald Reagan, who my dad cursed out nightly during the TV news, our president would have the same last name as my newfound obsession – Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five.  I saw all kinds of crossover opportunity for the pop supergroup and national politics, which in my 8 year old opinion, needed to seriously revamp its economic priorities and up its sparkle factor.   

During recess one morning, I began canvassing the playground of my Northern Michigan elementary school.  “Who would you vote for – Jackson or Reagan?”

My second grade teacher practiced “student-directed learning,” so when Mrs. Schultz got wind of my polling project, she armed me with a clipboard for the next recess to better keep track of the breakdown. 

Over the next several weeks, seeing a genuine learning opportunity, she taught our whole class about all of the candidates running for the chance to unseat Ronnie.  Besides Reverend Jackson (love) there was John Glenn (spaceman), George McGovern (boring), Walter Mondle (extra boring) and Gary Hart, who if you squinted a little, kind of looked like a cross between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker…only old.    

After a few weeks of polling and bar graphing the results, and learning about the issues with my fellow second graders, I switched my allegiance.  To this day I have in my house a campaign poster I made with Mr. Sketch markers and manila paper – “Vote for Hart” it says.  “He’ll have Nuclear Freeze….plus more great things.”

Now, I didn’t have the time or the room on the paper to go into all of those other things, but you had to trust me…they were going to be GREAT. 

Well, not only did Reagan sweep Gladwin Elementary School, he swept the floor of the Electoral College with the Mondale/Ferraro ticket, shattering my dreams temporarily but strengthening my resolve.

I remember the exact moment my junior year in high school when I thought to myself, “hey – I’ll major in political science when I get to college.” And just like that, my future was all taken care of.  I’d graduate, move to DC and start spreading liberal justice throughout the land.  Luckily, I was just deluded and stubborn enough not to notice that I had no real contacts or credentials, and landed a job right out of college in the United States Senate.     


 As Election Day 2000 drew closer, I could hardly wait.  It would be the first time I could actually vote for president.

Election Day on Capitol Hill had the feel of an elementary school holiday party. The staffers who voted in Virginia (rednecks) or Maryland (hippies) or DC (taxation without representation) came in to work wearing “I Voted!” stickers, all patriotic.  The rest of us vote back in the home state, having mailed in our absentee ballots weeks ago, which is totally anticlimactic. I made sure to recite the Nineteenth Amendment in my head as I dropped the envelope into the mailbox, just to give the moment the gravity it deserved. 

Getting through the work day was squirmy, itchy torture.  There were phone calls and whispers and sympathetic hallway eye contact with staff whose bosses were in danger of losing.  By the afternoon hours, we were trading exit poll numbers like teenage boys swap porn magazines.  “Our Chief of Staff says Ohio’s not even close.  Gore’s up 8 points in Florida – 8 points!”

We had no idea what we were in for. 

After work, my friend Nina came by my apartment to pick me up for David’s party.  This was the time before cell phones, before free wi-fi and Twitter and texts.  Before any wars had started.  Americans were congratulating ourselves for beating the recession of the 90s with catchy commercials starring sock puppets and yodeling cowboys.    

When we got to David’s I found a place on the couch in the front room among my other coworkers, watching CNN color states red and blue with the anticipation of a well-matched Superbowl. 

Within about an hour, the networks were calling Florida for Gore.  David and I looked at each other, grinning with amazement and relief.  “That’s it, then.  Gore wins, right?  Florida plus California means he wins.  It’s so early!” 

The TV showed the Bush family all going to dinner together in Texas, the former president, George Sr. waving grimly at the cameras.  I actually felt a pang of hurt for them.  They had to know it was all over. 

But… it was taking them forever to call any other states.  Too long.     

I can still hear Bernard Shaw matter-of-factly explaining that they weren’t going to call Florida after all.  They were taking it back.  Taking it back?  Too close to call, Bernie said.  That’s ridiculous, we said.  “They’re still going to call it for Gore, they just need to be sure.  Those exit polls wouldn’t be that far off.”

“No”, David said.  “This is bad.”  I wasn’t sure he was right, but that’s when I left the living room, because I couldn’t stand the suspense.

David’s house had a kitchen with a butcher block island.  Nina and Joel were flirting over it.  Joel had a beer and I mixed Nina a vodka cocktail.  We began proposing toasts and drinking to various concepts and candidates –

“To Debbie Stabenow!” running for Senate in my home state of Michigan.

“To the lockbox!” 

“To Fucking Florida!”


After each, we’d drink.  Joel from his beer, Nina from her cup and me, straight from the vodka handle. 

Many toasts later, I could feel everything spiraling out of control with each minute it took for them to make up their goddamn minds on Florida.  “Give back Florida” I chanted intermittently between gallows jokes and vodka swigs.  My head and ears buzzed with the shots and anxiety. 

Eventually there were shouts and jeers from the living room.  They called Florida – for Bush. 

We ran to the TV.  I began eating baby carrots out of a bowl bowl on the coffee table compulsively, chewing them down to mossy bits. It had to be wrong, it had to be cancelled out by Ohio or Pennsylvania or something.

Eventually, unbelievably, all of the networks had called the entire election for Bush. 

Damn Bill Clinton and his stupid blow jobs!!  I sputtered. 

I started to cry – long streaming tears.  My friends will tell you this was kind of funny, kind of excessive.  Nina came over and hugged my shoulders and I wept.  But I don’t think it was the alcohol.  It was a deep, unsettling doom. 

And then I remember quoting Hamlet, “The king, the king’s to blame.”  That was the alcohol.

Nina and Joel let me cry a little bit longer on the living room floor among the shattered pretzels.  But there was really only one thing they wanted to do – get us out of David’s party (now a wake) and back to my apartment. 

One thing you need to keep in mind about DC.  If, as they say, all of the prom queens go to LA after high school then all of the student council presidents go to DC.  We were a bunch of straightlaced, law-abiding nerds. 

But. 

Because of my long-distance boyfriend’s employment on a Midwestern college campus, I had…in my apartment….a small amount of….marijuana.  For DC, this was like saying I had round-the-clock access to hookers and blow.  I might as well be filming rap videos in my off hours.    

Back in my 7th floor apartment late in the night, we didn’t turn on the TV, we smoked and we laughed and we cursed huddled around my bare wood Ikea table, the color of matchsticks. 

Paranoia crept in.  It was late, we were being loud.  I became convinced that my next door neighbors were going to turn me in to the building’s front desk, who would send a security guard, who would smell marijuana when they came to tell us to keep it down and inevitably call the police, who would arrest us and get us fired from our Senate jobs. 

“We have to get out of here,” I told them.  “I’m staying right here.  I’m going to sleep.” Joel insisted, stretched out on his back on the beige carpeting.  It was nearly 2 in the morning.

 “No, seriously, we have to go.”  I was hiding the evidence – stashing the bag of weed in a used Poli Sci textbook on my bookcase, the rolling papers in another.  I even hid the lighter behind the TV – convinced that my cleverness would foil building management and the ATF agents when they keyed in to search the apartment.   

What ultimately worked in my favor was Nina’s desire to get Joel back to her house and into her bed.  Nina was renting a floor in the house of a divorced ex-diplomat who traveled constantly and had super expensive art on the walls.  As soon as we arrived, I hit the first floor bathroom and threw up baby carrots, bright orange against the 1980s black porcelain toilet bowl.  I left Joel and Nina making out in the kitchen, climbed the stairs and landed face-first in the guest bed. 

We hadn’t seen the news.  We hadn’t heard that Gore hadn’t conceded after all.  We had no idea what we were in for. 

I woke up in my clothes, in the strange bed with strange light coming through the windows.  Dizzy and dehydrated, I dragged myself out the door so I could change for work. It wasn’t until I walked home and saw the headlines for sale in the Washington Post paper boxes that I learned that things weren’t what they seemed last night.  That there was still hope.

After a foggy, hungover few hours at the office, a group of us walked over to McDonalds.  The country is about to go crazy, we marveled to each other between bites of salty french fries. 

We had no idea what we were in for.   

What if we had?  Should we have rioted in the streets instead of politely acquiescing to the Sore Loserman signs and the khaki-clad double-chinned young republicans charging the office of the election commissioner in Palm Beach County?  Should we have fought like they did?  They brought flamethrowers.  We brought Warren Christopher.   

And sometimes I wonder…what questions would that idealistic 8 year old have for me?

Why did you do nothing but sniffle and share a joint and throw up in a black toilet?  Did you enjoy that McChicken sandwich the next day?  When there may have still been a chance to fix it?

Maybe I should have done more.  But I guess I was not born for marches and Molotov cocktails and courage.

Sorry, kid.  

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