Last Night's Veep Debate

Tuesday night's Vice Presidential debate between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence provided the starkest contrasts between what should have been and what truly is. Re: Kaine, I'm not a fan, I would not vote for him, and I think his abortion position is terribly wrong. But at least he is not corrupt. He's not a liar. He's not been indoctrinated in the Clinton machine for decades and he doesn't control a crony-heavy personal foundation that will siphon off a cut of whatever blood money is thrown its way. He's a mainstream liberal.

And Pence...if he hadn't needed to spend much of the debate time fending off, ignoring, pivoting, and circumventing from various cutting comments about Trump, what a debate it could have been! He was thoughtful, smart, humble, and exuded a maturity that hasn't been seen by any other candidate running. A Ryan/Pence or Cotton/Pence or Sasse/Pence ticket...I mean, think about what could have been. A sober discussion of the issues, someone the base could respond to, true adult behavior as opposed to vindictive asides and ego-boosting, trash-talking tirades. You know, what we used to call ideas based debate.

There's so much that runs through my mind when I think what this country has lost in this election. It started the day, really, when Justice Scalia died, when there was still a chance that the republic could be kept. And yeah, I'm aware that the 1800 election was fought by surrogates for candidates, who for that time, intensely disliked each other. I know our founders had family feuds, that rumor mongering and adultery gossip and that no less than Grover Cleveland faced his share of scandal. But we've never had an election where we've so many sidebars from a vindictive Miss Universe, Trump University, email scandals, name calling, feuds against Megyn Kelly and other journalists, twitter rants at all hours of the day, real and imagined health scares, allegations of complicity in a presidential assassinations...if only Mike Pence could really have told us what he thought. But able public servant, who has already chosen which bed he would lie in, did what he had to do.

In some ways, the United States of America has never been more prosperous. Luxuries that people suffering through Hurricane Matthew in Haiti are enduring--smartphones, luxury headphones, smart televisions, $5 lattes, designer handbags, etc--these are all items that everyone seems to access. And yes, that is a classist observation. But in a generation, Americans are able to transcend the limitations they've endured because we are a society where anyone--including the president of the United States--can rise up. To look at the media, there's no way out other than opiod hell, minimum wage jobs, and racial animosity by a hostile white upperclass that is dedicated to keeping the man down. And that is purely ridiculous. America was, is, and always will be great. Americans, they are the ones who fall short of accepting the gift of the last, best hope of earth.

I have gone through my times of utter depression this election years. This is not the idea of America that our founding generation bestowed on us. Certainly Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump aren't the ideal. But only America, with its constitution and separation of powers and faith in the power of the people could curb whatever dangerous tendencies that other hold.

I would have been ecstatic had the race this year been Pence vs. Kaine. I don't intend to settle, but what that means, I am not quite there yet.