Holding My Nose at the Polls

Four days ago I cast my vote in the presidential primary for Sen. Barack Obama. My trek to the polls was one of the few times when I didn’t have to hold my nose while casting a ballot.
I have voted in every presidential election, primary and general, since 1980. I believe in the adage, “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.” When I was an idealistic young college student, I thought then-President Jimmy Carter was doing a terrible job with the economy. So, I voted for Sen. Edward Kennedy in the Democratic primary, who lost to Carter. Then I made a big mistake. I switched to the Republican Party briefly so I could vote for U.S. Rep. John Anderson for president in the general election. (He later switched to being an independent. It took months for me to get off the Republican Party’s mailing list.) In the end, actor and former California Gov. Ronald Reagan won, launching eight years of neo-conservative policies.

When President Reagan ran for a second term in 1984, the best the Democratic Party could do was Carter’s former Vice President Walter Mondale. He wasn’t my first choice, but I didn’t want another four years of “Bonzo.” So, I voted for Mondale, holding my nose. Rats! A landslide and four more years of Reagan.

In 1988, I became an independent because I had become a newspaper reporter and didn't want to show any biases should anyone investigate my party affiliation. But Ivoted as a Democrat. I thought maybe there was light at the end of the presidential tunnel. George H.W. Bush was the Republican nominee that year. Whom did the Democrats come up with? A reserved, somewhat wonkish Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. (I couldn’t vote in the Democratic presidential primary then because decline-to-state voters in California were not allowed to do so then.) Then his biggest claim to fame was his cousin Olympia Dukakis, who won the Academy Award for best supporting actress that year for the film “Moonstruck.” It didn’t help that an independent political action committee that backed Bush Sr. hurled Willie Horton into the voting public’s consciousness. Dukakis supported a prison furlough program in his state that resulted in the release of convicted murderer William Horton, who committed a rape and assault in Maryland after being freed. The ad the committee aired used a mug shot of Horton, who is African American. The Bush campaign did nothing to repudiate it. Voters overwhelmingly elected Bush Sr. over Dukakis.

In 1992, I thought Bush Sr. would easily get another four-year term until Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton came on the scene. He was one of the few candidates for whom I purposefully strode to my polling place and cast my vote just before I went to work. I didn’t have a lot of hope back then. (Clinton kept referring to his former hometown of Hope, Ark.) But I felt I had to try to get Bush Sr. out. I was overjoyed when Clinton, along with California’s first elected female senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, were swept into office.

I walked briskly to my polling place again in 1996 when President Clinton ran against Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas. I thought Dole was a dour conservative who threatened to push back much of the progress made during the Clinton presidency. Had I known that Dole actually has a self-deprecating sense of humor, I might have considered voting for him. (NOT!)

I thought in 2000 maybe the Democratic streak could continue with Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore. He, like Dukakis, seemed stiff and reserved, but I preferred him to the doofus running for president – George W. Bush. (The late Molly Ivins was right to refer to Bush-whacker as “Shrub.”) But having been fed up with Clinton’s peccadilloes (such as his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky while in office), voters came out against Gore. Actually, it was the Republican-packed U.S. Supreme Court that handed the presidency to Bush-whacker.

The former Texas governor who promoted himself as “a uniter, not a divider” was anything but. Backed by a Republican Congress, he pushed for an invasion of Iraq under the guise of the “war on terror” to get rid of dictator Saddam Hussein. From unwise tax cuts to his momentary freezing when he heard about the 9/11 attack of the United States to his neglect of the poor and middle class and people of color, Bush-whacker earned the dubious honor of a song by Green Day – “American Idiot.”

Desperate to get rid of the “Emperor with No Clothes,” I supported then Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina in the Democratic primary because I liked his stance on addressing poverty in this nation. (That year, I was allowed to vote on a Democratic presidential primary ballot for the first time.) Instead, the Democrats ended up with an earnest, yet rather ineffectual Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Again, I held my nose in November 2004 because I didn’t think I could bear another four years of Bush-whacker. This time, Bush-whacker won by about 3 million votes.

This year, the Democratic presidential nominee may be a woman, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, or an African American man, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. I voted for Obama because I want a president who is not as polarizing as Hillary (She has baggage from her husband Bill’s presidency.) and would be more able to bridge Democrats and Republicans. Whoever becomes the eventual nominee, I won’t have to hold my nose at the polls this November.

Writing Diva