The observer

It's occurred to me that not only am I old enough that the outcome of the election will have little affect on my personal life (not enough years left) but I also don't have children and grandkids to worry about, which means I have personal disengagement from all this political uproar, except in so far as I worry about the future of my country, which I do.

This election is going to be a revealing test about where the country is at this moment in time. Personally, I hope the election is determined by people under forty, maybe under thirty, whatever they believe. It's going to be their country, they should come out in huge numbers to express their will.

If this happens, I am optimistic that Obama will win ... and then I'll hope that this is a good thing. I think it can be. But I thought electing Johnson over that trigger-happy Goldwater was going to be a good thing, too, and it ended up being a disaster. Johnson, who pledged not to send American boys to fight in Vietnam, did exactly that. It's nice to hope that Obama really is a new kind of politician, but anyone my age has been fooled too many times to accept this at face value.

In the primaries, I was for Joe Biden, and I confess my enthusiasm for Obama is raised considerably by knowing Biden would become president if Obama got elected and assassinated, which also strikes me as far less impossible than I thought as a young man. Yes, I'm jaded and cynical but this all comes from experience. "The audacity of hope" is audacious indeed.

In the beginning of this process, I shocked my wife by saying I could see circumstances in which I'd vote for McCain (H is much more anti-Republican than I am). But then McCain made his statement about Hamas celebrating if O were elected, a really cheap shot; and then he put this evangelical lady on the ticket, no way no how no McCain. But I'm not really excited about anyone except Biden.

I say, let the young folks decide. I hope hordes and hordes of under 40 voters come out and vote for the world they want to see -- and then they make it happen.

I have no idea what will happen. I think most young folks are for Obama, but I don't know if they'll vote or be turned off by the campaign, which certainly smells as rotten on both sides as American political campaigns always do. Not much new is going on that I see. Still, I'm very curious how all this is going to turn out. And whichever way it turns out, well, I'll still be most happy in my Zone of Work, and I'll still be an old guy on the sidelines, watching the world go by as I try to get some work done.