Changing Times

Bush, Kerry Squeeze Every Hour to Campaign

When we woke up Saturday morning, we promised ourselves we wouldn't let our weekend be dominated by the upcoming election. There's only so much self-policing one can do, though, and by Saturday night we had the politicians on the TV--before watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which was a welcome respite.

But Sunday was a disaster; besides waking up to electoral vote projections galore and posting our election projections to the site, discussing the election on the phone with my mother, and talking about the election over desserts at Culvers and in the car, I sat with Brad and watched Scarborough Country, Hardball, all the campaign ads from this election on CSPAN, two Kerry rallies, and Kerry at a black church in Ohio speaking from the pulpit. I think John Kerry was in my (mostly sleepless) dreams last night.

I blame the time change. How can it possibly be a good idea to add an hour to the last weekend of a bitter campaign? The candidates may be happy to "squeeze" every last hour, as the article above would have you believe, but the rest of us are ready to be done with this. I may suffer withdrawal symptoms afterward; if Bush wins I may be sullen for a period better measured in weeks or months than days or hours. No matter: nothing, not even overwhleming feelings of righteous indignation and contempt for my fellow Americans, could be worse than the vaguely puke-ish feeling in my stomach that this election has aroused this last week, making me suspect flu on a daily basis whlie knowing it's really just nerves regarding something over which I have no control.

So, in addition to my springtime proposal to make springing ahead a national worker's holiday, I propose changing the mechanisms for daylight savings so that the longest weekend of the year falls the weekend AFTER the election rather than the one BEFORE it. Unless we're about to enter a period of unprecedented national unity, these elections are just going to keep getting longer and longer and generating more and more discord. Wouldn't we be better off with more time to rest afterward? (Or more time to contest the results before Inauguration Day?)

Here's hoping for quick returns tomorrow night, a new president--and an end to all of this madness!