You'll think differently if Bush wins. The best hope for this republic in the next four years is Gridlock, sweet Gridlock. Kerry, unlike Bush will have little influence in Congress and another election to be mindful of.
You may be right. I hope not. The big problem is the 2 party system. It's adversarial at best. I will never put that D or R next to my name. This country was not set up to have such a party system. Gridlock is not all bad, unless you're at war.
Another good read on our subject is Victor Davis Hanson. Here's a good transcript on his book "Mexifornia" from Booknotes on Cspan.
http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1747&QueryText=Mexifornia
~snip~
HANSON: Well, because it`s a very strange thing that`s happening. We have the corporate conservative right who wants a perennial supply, I think, of cheap labor, who is in alliance with the therapeutic left that wants an unassimilated constituency. And the language that we use -- protectionist or racist -- precludes discussion of this issue, which is -- we have an election coming up in California, a bizarre election. But we have this 800-pound gorilla of illegal immigration, and it doesn`t have anything to do with Mexicans or Mexico or legal immigration. It`s a particular illegal immigration from Mexico that`s starting a whole series of inconsistencies, antitheses problems. And we`re not discussing it.
LAMB: What`s the -- what are the numbers?
HANSON: Well, we don`t know. Nationwide, I think the U.S. census suggests there`s nine million illegal aliens. I`ve seen figures of 15 or 19, 20, that advocates on both the left and right will use, that are currently in the United States. In California, I`ve seen as many as 3 to 4 million. A term that`s used now is immigrants, meaning people were born in Mexico, and that precludes the argument whether they`re here illegally or legally. But whatever the term we use, it`s a radical shift since, say, 1970, where we had 400,000, not 4 million. And most of them were here legally, and we had the assimilationist pattern, where we had no bilingual education, no Chicano studies, and it was based on assimilation, intermarriage and unity of the United States. And I -- and I grew up in that generation, and the people that I knew -- I was one of the few non-Mexican-Americans in my school district. They`re all smashing successes now.