I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. -- Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952
A number of non-Americans read this blog, and I will assume they are interested in our great national obsession that ends tomorrow. This will be the 10th national election in which I have voted. I started with Nixon/Humphrey, and it was hard to imagine at the time that any one political season could ever be more consuming, more passionately fought, more in our faces every day. Of course, back then all we had to rely on were the daily newspapers and three major TV networks. Now we can choose among dozens of cable stations and all the blogs we can consume.
The current campaign has been the most animated for me since 1968, the equivalent in many ways of a heavyweight prize fight, with all the thrusting and parrying and wild shots and some nice jabs landed. It is unimaginable that there can be anything more we can learn about John McCain and Barrack Obama. Over the coming months and years, we are going to learn a lot more about one of them.
The lines will be long tomorrow, but long lines are a small price to pay to exercise one of our most important responsibilities. The candidates have had their turn. It's our turn now.
