"I Know You Are, But What Am I?..."

Two years ago, I published a collection of essays chronicling the 2008 presidential campaign.

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The book is entitled "Three Hats" and is available at Blurb.com.

And now...

As an epilogue to that work, at that time, I wrote the following:

January 2010.
Barack Obama has been President for one year. Assuming, God forbid, that some psychotic wack job trying to impress Halle Berry doesn’t take a shot at him, those who didn’t care for him still don’t care for him and those that believed him to be the answer to every prayer uttered have quietly gone back to living their lives as best they can, having realized that he is mere mortal, subject to the same challenges and setbacks that every guy who calls the Oval Office his nine to five.
Oprah is inconsolable, by the way.

Now, as we approach the mid term elections in the year 2010, allow me to once again offer my layman's prediction:

November 2010
The mid term elections been held. The clear and unmistakable voice being heard in the polling results is one of frustration and resentment. The former arising from a sense Democrats have that the promise that seemed so bright and shining in 2008 turned out, in fact, to be more pyrite than precious metal and the latter arising from a sense Republicans have that so many were blinded by that brightness that the right was robbed of its chance to have four more years of Bush-Cheney by any other name.

And while I'm at it, let me add to that a little of this:

Ultimately, unless there is some high drama twist waiting around the next bend to thicken the plot, the presidency of Barack Obama will end in November 2012, regardless of who the Republicans nominate, his singular, and primary, accomplishment being that he was the man history chose to break the racial ceiling at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Our political system, much like our economic system, functions and/or survives, largely in spite of, rather than because of, those who circumstance or circumvention put in the wheelhouse at any given time.

And despite the passionate, albeit irrational, beliefs of the extremists in our own society who vent their political spleens with absurd notions of a White House occupied by Muslim terrorists or foreign born non-American citizens or, God forbid, the anti-Christ incarnate, the system will do what the system always does.

Purge, clean, right and adjust itself accordingly.

It was designed that way.

Perhaps the most positive contribution we can make is to continue reaching for the stars, while keeping our expectations and feet on the ground.

While offering to our more hysterical fellow travelers that screaming about the sky falling might clear the throat...but it doesn't clear the path.