Frank Rich says we’ll need another Woodward and Bernstein if Bush is re-elected.

You know, as much as I want Kerry to win, a very small part of me hopes Bush wins, if only because I want him to have to clean up his own mess in Iraq. If things are going to be shitty in Iraq no matter who wins, we may as well make him deal with it himself. On the other hand: 1) his power of denial is astonishing, and he probably won’t clean up his mess, nor appear to care about it, and 2) the small bit of satisfaction gained in watching the public turn against him will be outweighed by having to deal with him for another four years, wth the public powerless to kick him out.

I’m bummed that the polls seem to be stuck in a tie, but at least that’s better than Bush’s clear lead before the debates. Still, I’m dumbstruck by what Bush gets away with. He outright lied last night when he said, “Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations.”

No it’s not, dipshit. From March 2002:

Q: But don’t you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won’t truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from him. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run.

And those words from 2002 weren’t just a verbal gaffe. He didn’t just say he wasn’t concerned; his subsequent actions showed he wasn’t. He didn’t care about finding bin Laden as much as he cared about using 9/11 as an excuse to get rid of Saddam.

There was also Bush’s lie last night that “my opponent says he’d give other nations a veto over national security” or whatnot, when Kerry has repeatedly and quite directly said that he won’t. Again, I’m amazed. I wish Kerry had made more of a character issue out of this kind of thing. There was a lot of “he said/he said” last night; Bush would say something and Kerry would respond with his version of things, leaving the viewers to wonder who was right. Kerry should have tied it all together and made a global argument, saying, “This is a president who hears only what he wants to hear, who has shown time and again that he’s completely out of touch with reality,” and so on. He should have exploited the instincts people already have about Bush. But perhaps he thought that would sound too mean-spirited when he’s trying to win over more women.

So, here we are: 19 days to go, the polls are tied, and unless something changes (and I’m sure the Bush people have a few tricks up their sleeves), November 2 is going to be one long night.

In fact, November might be one long month.

Where do I begin describing our trip to Tennessee last week for Matt’s brother’s wedding? I had such a great time. Here, in random order, are some vignettes.

I’ve never met three siblings more completely different than Matt and his two brothers. The youngest, Andrew (the groom), is a self-described redneck. He’s scruffy-looking and rides a motorcycle. (I didn’t see much of him since he was busy most of the time with wedding stuff.) The middle brother, Gary, is a jack of all trades. He’s incredibly nice and very funny, with a quick wit and oversized glasses. He looks a little like Matt. He went to welding school and now works at Lowe’s. He brought his dog for the weekend, a collie/mutt named Rosie, and she reminded me so much of my family’s old dog. (I would have taken her home with me if I could have snuck her on the plane.) Then there’s Matt, of course, who’s gay, lives in New York, and loves musical theater. I would never think that he was the brother of these guys. On the other hand, he loves to tinker with computers, so I guess the three of them have a love of tinkering in common.

Matt’s father and uncle were born in Roswell, NM in the 1940s. Both men believe there could have been aliens in Area 51. Matt’s uncle described some conversations with people who worked at the base, and Matt’s dad speculated that transistors might have come from alien technology. I couldn’t tell how seriously they believed in it, though.

I went to my very first Steak n Shake. Yum. I’d never heard of it before, which is no surprise, given its locations.

Matt, Matt’s mom and I shopped at the biggest Wal-Mart I’ve ever seen. It was cavernous.

College football is huge in the South. I went to school in Virginia, but someone joked with me last weekend that Virginia isn’t really the South. After the wedding reception on Saturday, Matt and I wound up watching the end of a Tennessee-Georgia football game with a bunch of middle-aged men in the living room of Matt’s parents’ house. The few times that someone addressed a sports-related comment to me, I nodded and smiled and pretended I understood.

Andrew’s childhood friend was at the wedding. He goes to Auburn. He mentioned that his best friend at Auburn is gay, and that the guy’s fraternity kicked the guy out when they learned this, except that they wanted him to stay long enough so that they had enough brothers to qualify for something-or-other. Nice work.

There’s so much open country. Standing on the steps of the church, one could look out and see
green mountains in the distance. Barely any vehicles going by. Quiet and beautiful.

I saw more political signs on front lawns than I’d seen in a long time. A majority were Bush-Cheney, but there were more Kerry-Edwards signs than I’d expected.

The bride’s parents had incredibly thick southern accents. “Like” was “laaaahk.” Each of her two brothers had intriguing facial hair and two earrings. (Matt told me that earrings don’t mean the same thing down south as they do in New York.) They both ushered at the wedding, but they wore their shirts open-necked and with no tie.

The men in the wedding party wore white tuxes and white shoes.

I was slightly thrown off the southern stereotypes by the wedding being Catholic, not Baptist or anything like that.

The priest definitely seemed to know what the deal was with me and Matt. Interesting.

The room where we slept had the 1981 World Book Encyclopedia on its shelves. I had fun poring over it.

On the way back to the airport, Matt’s dad gave us a driving tour of nearby Chattanooga and the surrounding area. I like seeing parts of the country I’ve never seen before.

Again, I had a great time. I’m glad I went.

More as it occurs to me…

I always thought he’d walk again. I really did. His optimism was that palpable, especially as conveyed in the profile that ran in the New Yorker last year.

His accident happened near the University of Virginia less than a week after I graduated from there. He spent some time at the UVa Hospital, and then he went to the Kessler Institute, which is in West Orange, New Jersey, the next town over from my hometown. A few years later, when I was back at UVa, I saw him give the Valedictory Address during graduation weekend. Just last month, my mom got to attend a lunch where he was speaking.

He appeared twice on “Smallville” as Dr. Virgil Swann, a doctor who introduced Clark to his Kryptonian heritage; I wonder if any future appearances were planned. If so, maybe they’ll use Margot Kidder instead, who was on the recent season premiere as Dr. Swann’s colleague.

I can’t imagine what the last nine-plus years must have been like for him and his wife. I don’t know what I would have done in his circumstances. I hope his wife, at least, can find some measure of peace now.

I’m still sad that he’ll never walk again.

Cartoons in his memory.