
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Nov. 8, 2006
/ 17 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767
The calm between two storms
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
To everything there is a season. There is a time to campaign and, thank goodness, a time to cease campaigning.
Maybe you noticed it when you went out for the paper yesterday morning: a peculiar stillness, a momentary return to sanity. Up and down the street, the yard signs still announced their allegiances, but they no longer seemed to shout. It was if they knew their days no, their hours were numbered. The campaign had wound down to its last day, its energy spent. The only tremors left would be aftershocks. The storm was over.
It would be a blessed 12 hours before the storm after the storm hit the flood of election results, the victory speeches and concessions, the still undecided races hanging on contested ballots, the claiming credit and casting blame….
But for one precious day there was an almost holy peace, a truce in man's never-ending race for power. It was a day to be seized, its rituals savored at polling places and while driving past intersections that had sprouted all these people waving different campaign signs and SMILING. But they would soon be gone, too.
There has always been something special about an American election day. One day the campaign is plowing ahead full speed, complete with brass bands, all stops pulled out, and the next you know, the whole thing is over. The fit has passed. Partisanship has been suspended, at least briefly. A strange, unaccustomed quiet descends. Great fun, elections, and greater relief when they're done.
Which is the real America? The crossfire of raucous debate and dueling ads, the glittering grandiloquence of the candidates and their surrogates, all the razzmatazz and Moment of Decision oratory? Or the sacramental quiet of the voting booth, with its confessional air, where at last everything boils down to the single citizen alone at last.
A free election is both, of course, the melee and the pause, The People and the individual soul. The two merge during the campaign, then separate in the voting booth. That is what gives election day its Janus-like quality of looking both backward and forward, outward and inward.
The long, quiet day is a surreal, 12-hour pause between two political explosions the long campaign and what everyone hopes won't be the long count.
How I hated to see that evening sun go down. Because then the truce would end and the brouhaha return. But for a few brief hours, reason seemed to reign, not the madness of crowds.
Outside the polling places, all across the land, Americans waited patiently to cast their vote, do their duty, make their choices. … One Norman Rockwell scene after another unfolded. The American flags came out to be unfurled and displayed. The VOTE HERE signs were unwrapped, like Christmas ornaments, and displayed at every precinct, whether fire station or school or church.
The old and younger, able and disabled, native-born and immigrant, black and white and other, waited patiently. All took their assigned places in the quadrennial pageant. It was as if the line of voters extended clear across the continent and beyond. Our differences no longer mattered, for they are only outward differences, like party or region and all the rest. On election day it's as if the American people line up for a group portrait‹to see how we've grown. For one day, we are indeed one nation indivisible.
The death of civility, it seems, has been greatly exaggerated. The poll workers are helpful, friendly, doing their patient best. The waiting voters talk about the weather or anything else except how they'll cast their secret ballot. Respect reigns. After months of public posturing, a healing reticence and courtesy emerge.
Somewhere, one could be sure, there were disputes and demagogues waiting to break loose again, but at your typical red-white-and-blue polling place, this was still a republic, not a circus. Amid all the attack ads and ordinary rancor, sometimes we forget there's a difference. But not on election day, when this mass democracy stops swirling, the great herd parts, and everything comes down to one citizen casting one vote.
Election Day no longer has all the elements that once set it apart, what with early voting and electronic voting machines. But the day still has its magic. It still has an air of political communion, of a ritual that removes the stains of the campaign, and lets us all start clean again. It's a spirit to hold on to as all the pre-election predictions become post-election explanations or excuses. It's a spirit to hold onto long after the day is past.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|