Cracked Window

Post-election observations keep washing over me, none more powerful than this: democracy worked when I had lost faith in it.

The doubt was well-founded, I continue to believe, but today I’ve never felt better about the country. I’ll feel even better when the sins of the last eight years are reversed and daunting problems confronted. Honest and tough leadership combined with pragmatic solutions will carry us a long way. And President-elect Obama’s victory speech was a paragon of sober leadership.

Before Obama won, I was so caught up in the race that I failed to anticipate how his victory would affect people. The scenes on television stunned me in the best possible way. A phone call from my youngest brother and his wife moved me even more. My brother, not the most emotive guy and never one to get caught up in politics, had tears streaming down his face, his wife said.

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I made my last donation to Barack Obama last night. Not that he needs the cash at this stage of his campaign, a fund-raising juggernaut that politicians and political scientists will study for years to come. My wife and I have made modest donations six or seven times. With victory appearing all but certain, this was the first motivated purely out of selfishness.

Donating by midnight put me in a drawing. The prize: an expense-paid trip for two to be among ten people backstage with the next president of the United States at his campaign headquarters in Chicago on Election Night.

Imagining that possibility, seeing Suzame and me with Obama and his family, was too much to resist. It also seemed like a good luck omen, as was the purchase of an Obama painting Friday. (The painting, displayed in our home office window, is getting many smiles and words of praise from passersby.) Such omens, though irrational, ease the intensifying tension as we reach the campaign’s end.

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Sometimes I look at things too simply. Take, for example, U.S.-style elections. Because we live in a democracy, the people decide who gets elected to make the big decisions that affect our lives. Therefore conducting free and fair elections should be the most efficient and effective thing we do as a nation.

Oh silly me. In truth, no other western democratic nation makes it so difficult for people to both register and vote. Waiting ten hours in line then getting turned away is hardly democratic. Same for having too few voting machines at too few precincts. And then there’s the issue of voting machine reliability and registration problems.

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