Today I spent time with somebody I like I lot, a friend from out of town who happens to be a conservative Republican. The last time we got together, we had a rather tense and careful conversation that led to some awkwardness and a certain amount of mutual disbelief, the subtext going both ways being something like “I can’t believe somebody as intelligent as you believes such things.”<\/p>\n
This time though, the elephant stayed politely and invisibly tucked away in a corner of the room. The subject of politics was not raised, and it was clear that neither of us had any interest in raising it. Given the recent turn of events, I’m sure my friend would have agreed that Barack Obama is much closer to becoming our 44th U.S. President than is John McCain. But I didn’t have the slightest interest in pointing this out. It would have felt smug and condescending, and would have served no purpose other than to drive a personal wedge between us.<\/p>\n
I think that part of the reason the topic was off-limits – much as I hate to admit this – is that Obama’s advantage is not primarily due to his political views (which of course are far more similar to my own than are those of his opponent) but rather to the fact that he has run an excellent and professional campaign, whereas McCain and his advisors have made just about every mistake imaginable – the largest being the rash choice of Sarah Palin, which has removed any hope of the G.O.P. reaching the numbers it needs among the all-important undecided voters.<\/p>\n
It is not so much my friend’s beliefs<\/i> that America is probably about to vote against, but rather the incompetency of his party’s campaign. And so, agreeing to ignore that elephant in the corner, my friend and I had a wonderful time. We discussed music, movies, family, and all of those mundane yet comforting things that will continue on beyond November 4, no matter who enters the Oval Office this coming January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I spent time with somebody I like I lot, a friend from out of town who happens to be a conservative Republican. The last time we got together, we had a rather tense and careful conversation that led to some awkwardness and a certain amount of mutual disbelief, the subtext going both ways being … Continue reading “Other elephants, other rooms”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}