Politics and other nightmares

The Democrats, who capitalized on the theme of Republican corruption, turn to the likes of Harry "real estate" Reid and John "Abscam" Murtha for leadership. The Republicans put Trent Lott back into leadership as I like to whip those who are members of a minority whip. It looks like we are going to be harangued for two years by John McCain and Hillary Clinton as they race toward their presidential nominations. I don't know about the rest of you, but I need a nap. Wake me when we get out of Iraq or we have whipped global warming, whichever comes sooner.

Well, this is just swell. Americans are mad about Iraq, so they kick Republicans out. But:

More Americans rank Iraq as the top priority of the new Democratic-controlled Congress, but nearly three out of five say the party does not have a plan to deal with the war.

If you thought presidential politics had become so absurdly surrealistic that you had to laugh in order not to cry (or run screaming in terror), you might not have been far off the mark:

They're separated by more than 20 years, they come from opposing political parties, and one evicted the other from the White House. But Bill Clinton and George Bush act like a team, a pair of touring comedians with a well-honed act.

Mike Pence, seeking the GOP leadership of the U.S. House, has annoyed the Indiana Democratic Party by urging fellow House Republicans to use their “talents and expertise to dismantle Democratic arguments and expose their liberal, big government agenda at every turn.”

On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Democratic Party called the Indiana congressman's statement pessimistic and antagonistic.

Say it ain't so. Of all the things we did wrong in Vietnam, the worst thing we did was the way we just walked away at the end. Sorry, just kiddiing. Didn't really mean it. All those lives, just squandered. The day the helicopters took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy was one of the single most dishonorable days in American history. Is it possible we're going down that road again?

Considering the way the election went Tuesday, you'd think it would be Republicans trying to reach out to the middle. But here's Evan Bayh, telling his party to avoid extremism:

Sen. Evan Bayh, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett on Thursday that most Americans don't know what Democrats stand for despite the party's electoral success.

I hate to say it, since I've been a supporter of the new photo-ID requirement for voting, but it would have been pretty easy to commit fraud at my polling place Tuesday. It's one of the triple-precinct sites, which means at times the line of people waiting to vote snaked way out of sight of those escorting us to the voting machines. When we first went in, we were directed to go our precinct tables, show our IDs and sign the book, then go back to the end of the line, clutching our little pieces of paper with our precinct numbers on them, which we would then show at the voting machine.

A friend and I have a saying -- "No, no, no, I am the stupid one!" -- whenever one of us wants to admit a gaffe. Yesterday, that was me. After weeks of being consumed by the minutia of the election, I almost lost sight of, shall we say, the big picture. I intended to swing by to vote on the way home for lunch. About 4:30, though, I realized, "I forgot!" So I trudged out and hit the polling place about 5 p.m. Guess who else was there? Everybody else who waited until the last minute.

Mitch Harper at Fort Wayne Observed has a couple of must-reads on election procedures. The first talks about how, in the Fort Wayne Community Schools Board at-large race, with 10 candidates seeking two positions, the winners could have a very small percentage of the overall vote -- a little scary considering that FWCS is the largest public agency in Allen County. Shouldn't there be some kind of winnowing process, a runoff election so the winners have a litle more of a mandate?

This points out one of the sad facts of life we've all had to live with in newspapers: