The ghost of Tom Joad: Bush or Obama?

My father just got out of the hospital. I think he had an allergic reaction to Bush being reelected President. Or at least that's what I'm going with,
truth be damned. And I better stop swearing, lest I offend a morals voter. --

Anyway, my dad's stomach, which is normally a pot belly, grew to the size of carrying quadruplets in the third trimester. It happened the day after
Bush got his 51-48-1 "mandate" with big help from the "moral voters."

My dad was was in the hospital for four days and had a tube down his nose and throat. It made him talk like a cartoon mouse (or Harvey Pekar) for a day.

My dad thinks eating one bad thing a day equals staying the course on a healthy diet. And, though not tubby (like I am fast becoming), he
doesn't exercise. But these are back burner concerns to his distress over Bush being elected President for what actually is his first time.

This, of course, is hyperbolic subterfuge on my part, a writer's tool and one politicians use very well, too. Such a term may be hard for our President to
pronounce but skills at which he is the Grandmaster Flash working those wheels of steel.

Even in victory, the man is a master at it. Winning by one state and by 3 percentage points is hardly a lopsided victory. But there he was claiming a
mandate.

Then the spin goes to how morality played such a role in the election.

And all the Monday morning quarterbacking going on in the press and TV about this, finally, just made me laugh.

See, I still think Bush is a big fraternity boy-style liar. He ditched out of Vietnam, let his buddies slime John McCain four years ago and others smear Kerry's war record this time, convinced the public that Saddam had something to do with 9-11 and was evil villain pals with Osama who is still running free; gave a tax cut that helped the rich more than the middle class;
at the very least misled the public about weapons of mass destruction; and had that mysterious bulge in the back of his coat during the first debate.

When he was young he was a drunk, probably used cocaine a lot, probably slept around, but then he found Jesus. The Republican version.

Am I sounding like a cultural elite? Sorry. But like Jon Stewart pointed out the GOP Jesus is elitist, too, a sort of my way or the highway savior, who
says the only way you can get into his big afterlife party is to be "born again," which sounds painful.

What's funny though, is the GOP combines Jesus with Ayn Rand, a seeming contradiction. When you got an affable "regular guy" like W delivering the message, though, it goes down smooth, like it's the most
natural thing in the Free World.

Again with the hyperbolic subterfuge, the punditry, like I'm auditioning for a space on the couch next to the unctuous Chris Matthews.

For, despite all the post-election talk, what I think it came down to was personality - or what Willy Loman told his son, Biff, was the key to success in America, that it's important to be well-liked.

To paraphrase the suicidal salesman, John Kerry was liked, but not well-liked. He did get more votes for president than anyone, ever, besides
W. But he can't help that he commits a cardinal sin in the TV age (no not being a "liberal") -- being as stiff and a mortician.

He's just being himself, which is to say Charles Winchester III from MASH, or a rich guy from the
East. The cool Carhart coat couldn't change that. He is what he is.

Now Bush is a rich guy from the East too, but his Daddy moved the clan to Texas, sort of like Green Acres (Imagine that blueblood Barbara Bush at
home on the range. LMAO as they say on the Internet.) But Bush, has "it": the ability to seem, if not inspiring, at least comfortable, like a talk show
host (though hardly Oprah).

Clinton was the best Oprah president thus far, feeling our pain (and feeling up interns). But Bush is the PTL Club version of that.

Which is a really longwinded way to bring me to why I don't have this despair about the Democrats being spread in the media -- some of it
self-flagellation another part Bush-spin I am sure.

They just have to start looking harder and deeper (that sounds like a porn term; sorry, again) for a TV star of their own. Heck, Barack Obama is already being anointed one.

If this "moral values" crap were as cut and dried Republican as the after-talk would have it, Obama would have had a tougher time in his race. After all, he ran against Alan Keyes, the epitome of the moral virtues candidacy (whose own daughter is going to hell by his way of thinking).

Obama trounced Keyes and is now the junior Senator from Illinois.
I have seen Obama in person twice, the Saturday before the election and at his victory party.

He spoke out in pretty Republican West Dundee, IL and packed a place that holds 650 people. The big BUSH sign across the street was manned by 2-4 cold GOPers who took abuse from union guys about their man ditching out of Vietnam (ah the 60s, the decade that won't shut up).

Obama is everything Bush is before a crowd, and then some. Meaning he can pretty much talk in full sentences. Unlike Kerry, those sentences aren't
out of an inpenetrable novel. Like Bush, he doesn't shoot for the rafters like a preacher, but kicks it new school, like one of those guys at a "modern" church like Willow Creek, which is to say, like a TV guy, in
soothing tones.

So far at least, Obama is the Tiger Woods of American politics, the multiracial guy that our better instincts allow us to root for.

Obama's extended family is a virtual rainbow coalition - white, black, Hawaiian,
heck all that seems to be missing from the stage at the Hyatt victory fest was the "rainbow" which is to say a gay person.

His luck is such that no shady GOP operative was able to insidiously attack his Arabic-type name
or this melting pot family in the general election.

His wife is a pretty good speaker, too, and actually used the phrase "my babies' daddy" when introducing Obama.

There was one awful move though: a short movie, a montage of clips from his announcing his candidacy
to his speech at DemCon, which launched him into national stardom, like an ingenue on Broadway. Sad to say, it had a soundtrack with some sappy
song sung by (and probably written by) the same team that put out those “I Wanna Be Like Mike” Gatorade ads, with godawful Michael Bolton-like
vocals. Yet, how perfect the tie to Michael Jordan.

Obama’s campaign slogan was a curious, one, too: Yes We Can! That also is the theme song for kids'
show Bob the Builder.

I don't know a lot about Obama’s policies, but that he seems a pragmatic moderate/liberal (probably projecting my "values" onto him, like voters
do).

The “Yes We Can” theme took on a resonance I think can help the Dems - at both the suburban rally and the victory bash he closed with a
story about a 105 year old woman he met who voted for him.

He recounted her struggle over her century, in terms of advances scientific, technological but mostly social -- from segregation to the civil rights
movement (the 60s again) and beyond.

The Dems lost the south after Lyndon Johnson managed to get civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s. Johnson knew that might happen. He made a
moral choice, one he knew could cost plenty of votes for a long, long time.

Obama didn’t talk about this, but it was there just under the surface, that sometimes moral choices aren’t about manipulating voting blocks but doing the right thing, that right thing being based on tolerance.

They still have that part in the Bible, right? The part about judge not, lest ye be judged.

What about the part about loving thy neighbor?

......anyway, the Friday before the election I got into a heated discussion with a Bushie by accident. I violator a big rule: never talk about politics with strangers at a place that serves flaming cheese.

I opened my big mouth by saying I thought the election would be close and probably a mess like last time. He thought Bush would win in a landslide -- because of how he is handling the war.

I couldn't resist challenging his point of view.

I told him he listens to Rush Limbaugh too much, which it turned out was right assessment.

What's wrong with Rush he asked? Leaving the
hypocrisy of his drug addiction aside, I said he does nothing to advance the debate; plays to his base; and finds ridiculous examples of those who have
differing views.

(I happen to know quite a few loopy right-leaning Christians. Like people who make their kids take purity pledges. Or, more to the point, ones who if were secular/liberal that ass Limbaugh would be all over -- like the women from the local community college who teach at Cook County Jail in summer, a class for cons in a church-run program focusing on the Seven Habits of Highly effective people. Students from the same school head to Chicago on weekends trying to convert prostitutes to Jesus.)

Hell, at the high school this guy sends his son, (I heard from a friend’s son that) a kid was worried if he voted for Kerry in a mock election if it would be considered a sin. And a coworker of mine was shunned by some of his congregation when he admitted he was indeed going to vote for Kerry...

Anyway, I’m posting this now, a week or so after Bush’s inauguration - Freedom Fest 2004, with the tightest security ever, $40 million in parties and a promise to end tyranny, like a Republican Tom Joad protecting Dust Bowl migrant workers.

Who do you think read the book, Bush or Obama?