President ????

President ????
November 10, 2000

My editor extended this week's deadline long enough to give me time to have my nervous breakdown on election night, and recover enough to write about it. What neither he nor I expected was that the nervous breakdown is scheduled to go on and on and on. With the new deadline fast approaching, I still don't know whether to congratulate President Al Gore or shudder over the alternative. In any case, whoever he is, he will be our President. And we survived Franklin Pierce and Richard Nixon.

It has been a long time since we have had a cliff hanger like this. I do seem to remember the night in 1948 when Thomas Dewey went to bed as President (he thought) only to wake up to find Harry Truman had the job. Truman laughed all the way to the White House. It looks as though this could be the first time in over a hundred years when the candidate with the greatest popular vote loses in the electoral college. This happened to Andrew Jackson in 1824, to Samuel J. Tilden 1876 and to Grover Cleveland in1888. It may be time to look seriously at the electoral college.

This morning Peter Loge on KPRN had what may be the best idea yet: a co-presidency. Sounds like a great idea to me. When dealing with matters of state and protocol and ceremony, pull the personality kid away from the football game on TV and send him in to do the schmoozing. When the problems are intellectual, involving thought and experience, lock the serious brainy one in the Oval Office with the telephones (including the red one). They would both be happy. They could put up a wall and divide the living quarters, and require that the two men eat breakfast together to plan the day. They might have to put a fence on the front lawn to separate their dogs. But that could all be worked out.

But every cloud has a silver lining, even if my guy loses. I can celebrate the fact that the women have made a few more political gains. Thank goodness for Hillary. I so wanted to vote for her, but obviously she did not need it. She won big and she worked her tail off to do it and she took a tremendous amount of flack. In one debate the moderator had the nerve to ask her why she hadn't left her husband, a question even her enemies found outrageous. Now Hillary Rodham Clinton has stepped out from behind her husband's career and established herself as an independent woman and one to be taken very seriously. Yes, she is ambitious. Yes she is aggressive. Yes, she is highly capable. Hmmmm, if she were a man would we criticize her for that? We will hear lots more of her. Go, Hillary.

In addition to Senator Clinton, there will be three more new pro-choice Democratic women in the Senate, bringing the total number of women to 13. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Maria Cantwell of Washington, and Mel Carnahan, Missouri, who will fill her dead husband's shoes will be freshman Senators. Diane Feinstein of California was re-elected.

In Colorado we were amazingly smart. We protested using the state Constitution as a legislative device. Amendments 21, 24 and 25 went down in flames as I think they should have. We pay a legislature (not very much, to be sure) to govern. Why not let them govern or vote them out? Side note: Can somebody sell Doug Bruce the Golden Gate Bridge as a new home. It is probably tax free.

Personally, of course, I am breathing a great sigh of relief that my favorite Information Store will continue to be available, not only for me but for the 114,999 other citizens who use it. Twelve hundred people go through the doors of the Mesa County Public Library every day for research, reference, recreational reading, story hours and other services which the library provides. Amendment 21 would have decimated it.

This has been an election for the history books. What with a President --whoever he is -- without a mandate from the people and a Senate almost exactly split between the parties, it doesn't look very good for four years of progress.

But the sun will come up tomorrow.