Bill's Notes

Ten years ago, the Catholic sex abuse crisis broke out. Three years later, I joined the Catholic Church. The second Easter, as I was rushing to Easter service at the cathedral in downtown Philly, directly across the street I saw a middle-aged man holding up a sign. It was a picture of his son. His son had been abused and apparently committed suicide. I was stuck there for a moment. WWJD?

My best guess is Jesus would have gone across the street, listened, comforted and healed the man, and then invited him in. I thought about it. I still think about it. Jesus definitely would not have done what I did -- which was go inside and ignore the man. Take care of me, you know. I had to get to confession. The irony was not lost on me.

Here was a man in pain. Afterward, I looked for him, but he was gone. A man who obviously loved the church enough to join and bring his son, only to have a predator within the church damage him. The son is responsible for his own suicide, of course, but you don't say that to people who are hurting. Imagine the pain of losing your church and your son. Imagine feeling so powerless that you stand in front of a church with his picture and watch everyone else go by.

The service was beautiful and sanctified beyond measure. I hope that some got to him. I hope his self-excommunication stops.

Some general thoughts on November's election, in no particular order:

1. Trends are true until they are not. Just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't. Obama's negative approval rating and the general malaise of the country would in most years be a sign that he would be doomed to a Carter-like defeat. Obama's fecklessness, after a strongly assertive first six months in 2009, would similarly result in a severe electoral defeat.

Yet, my conservative friends are ignoring one thing: The crash in the fall 2008 and subsequent recovery scared the shit out of everybody. Scared the living crap out of them. For better or worse, things have stabilized. They have stabilized at a worse state than we've been used to for the past 25 years, but they are at least stable. For now. Thank God.

As Ming the Merciless once said, people are satisfied with less. We have an official 8.2 percent unemployment rate, closer to 15 percent if you include discouraged workers. That's high and brutal, and there is a lot of suffering out there. People who have played by the rules are getting hammered. About five full percentage points of the U.S. population (based on labor force participation rates) have essentially been knocked out of the economy through no fault of their own and not through medical bills or other calamity. That's about six million people.

Normally, this would mean an easy call for an incumbent defeat. But not when people can imagine it much much worse.

2. Things that can't go on, won't go on. Our deficits are unsustainable. They have been unsustainable. Neither political party can politically do what's necessary as long as they risk losing power.


Thus, neither side will do what's necessary until either: (A) one side wins decisively, or (B) the situation gets so bad that there is a political will for a bipartisan solution.

(3) People remember clearly the crash occurred during the Bush Administration. They remember clearly that the Republicans did not reduce the deficit when they had the opportunity. They don't trust the Republicans.

(4) The news media is interested in the horse race and in generating seeming conflict, even if the result is obvious for all to see. They can be extremely compelling in persuading people things are close when they are not. And then sometimes they are right and things are close.

******

This should be a slam-dunk landslide for Romney. It should be easy to call. But we seem to be living in different times than any I've known. Obama is much more popular than he should be at this stage of the race. Given his performance, he should have suffered a nomination challenge that either knocked him out of the race, such as Truman in 1952 and LBJ in 1968, or faced a tough primary challenge, such as Carter did in 1980.

There was no challenge. Despite this, some unknown challengers won significant quantities of the primary votes. It's this lack of a challenge despite his vulnerability that has me thinking we are in different times.

FWIW. YMMV.