Point of View: Recumbent for the Incumbent

   When our lights went out the second time, during the northeaster, Mary said if Obama hadn’t won she really would have been depressed.    

    Therefore, joy trumped gloom and doom in our case, and in fairly short order the lights came back on and all was well with the world — well, with our world in any event. Though I was worried momentarily that had Obama not won the popular, as well as the electoral vote, I might have to recant my rant of 2000 (when Gore won the popular vote, you’ll remember), and argue, contrariwise, that the Electoral College should be retained as a hedge against mob rule.

    When I heard rather early on on election night that Latinos and young people were voting in large numbers, I was reasonably sure it was all over for Romney and went to bed, while Mary and her mother, as they always do, kept vigil.

    The next morning, while still abed, I ventured that I was one of the few recumbent white men over 64 to have cast my vote for the incumbent.

    And now on to reform. Keeping people working and keeping them healthy and educated so that they can continue to be productive seem to me much more worthy goals than forever fattening the fortunes of a few. Freedom, in this case, is just another word for obscene aggrandizement.    

    Spend then on job creation, and, as the historian David McCullough recently said, free up teachers to teach what they’re passionate about. Do that and the deficit can wait.

    And if, in fact, the Enemy R Us, let us consider first the beam in our own eye rather than behold the mote in the eye of our brother. (Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41.)

    But enough preaching. We are beckoned today to the Thanksgiving table, where for a time we’ll revel in family, taking care to ignore the beam in our own eyes while plucking the motes from those of our in-laws.    

     And we’ll toast the Republicans too, myopic though they may be.When our lights went out the second time, during the northeaster, Mary said if Obama hadn’t won she really would have been depressed.    

    Therefore, joy trumped gloom and doom in our case, and in fairly short order the lights came back on and all was well with the world — well, with our world in any event. Though I was worried momentarily that had Obama not won the popular, as well as the electoral vote, I might have to recant my rant of 2000 (when Gore won the popular vote, you’ll remember), and argue, contrariwise, that the Electoral College should be retained as a hedge against mob rule.

    When I heard rather early on on election night that Latinos and young people were voting in large numbers, I was reasonably sure it was all over for Romney and went to bed, while Mary and her mother, as they always do, kept vigil.

    The next morning, while still abed, I ventured that I was one of the few recumbent white men over 64 to have cast my vote for the incumbent.

    And now on to reform. Keeping people working and keeping them healthy and educated so that they can continue to be productive seem to me much more worthy goals than forever fattening the fortunes of a few. Freedom, in this case, is just another word for obscene aggrandizement.    

    Spend then on job creation, and, as the historian David McCullough recently said, free up teachers to teach what they’re passionate about. Do that and the deficit can wait.

    And if, in fact, the Enemy R Us, let us consider first the beam in our own eye rather than behold the mote in the eye of our brother. (Matthew 7:3 and Luke 6:41.)

    But enough preaching. We are beckoned today to the Thanksgiving table, where for a time we’ll revel in family, taking care to ignore the beam in our own eyes while plucking the motes from those of our in-laws.    

     And we’ll toast the Republicans too, myopic though they may be.