I'm fairly certain the story I'm about to relate happened when I was in 6th grade (1986-1987), but it's possible it happened when I was in 7th grade (1987-1988). That means that I was either 11 or 12, an age at which I was old enough to appreciate what was happening, but now sufficiently eroded away in my memory to preclude a perfect recall of the event.

In other words: I remember this happening, but it's not like I can produce any sort of evidentiary proof.  Believe me, or don't.

All caveats established, let's proceed.

The assignment was a grade school perennial: Write to our local Congressperson or Senator. If he wrote back? Extra credit.

So I took my #2 pencil in my chubby fingers and applied it with an unmistakably adolescent scrawl to a sheet of wide-ruled, three-hole punched notebook paper.

"Dear Senator McCain,"

I began; I probably picked McCain because he had recently been "promoted" from the House to the Senate, and his name was in the news. I wasn't - at 11 or 12 - what you could call "politically engaged." I don't think I knew what the ideological differences between the parties were. I mean, to be honest, I didn't know much of anything. I just wanted to finish my homework before Spenser: For Hire  started.

So I filled the rest of the two "body" paragraphs of the letter with whatever semi-coherent content my preteen mind could generate. I don't remember the line by line specifics, but a few words and phrases stand out in my memory from the time - words and phrases I was particularly pleased with being able to use at the time, as I was fairly certain they made me sound more grown-up and politically aware than I actually was at the time:

"Constituencies"
"Partisan gridlock"
"Reach across the aisle"

String these three items together and you get the picture:  I exhorted him (although I didn't know that word at the time) to "reach across the aisle" and fight against "partisan gridlock" on behalf of his "constituencies" at home in the great state of Arizona.

As I said: No great indication of a developing political mind-- but what could one honestly expect from someone who was saving up his allowance to buy Serpentor?

I mailed my letter and all but forgot about it.

Several weeks later, during dinner, the phone rang. I remember that I answered the call. I don't remember the name of the youngish-sounding guy on the other end of the phone (in the tall-tale version of this story it would be Mark Salter), but I remember where he worked.

"This is ___ from Senator McCain's office. Can I talk to Jeffrey, please?

"This is he."

What follows is, as best as I can reconstruct from my memory, the remainder of the call in its entirety. Once he started speaking, I didn't say a word.

"Well, Jeffrey, I received your letter to Senator McCain, and I wanted to respond to you. First of all, the Senator has one constituency, the residents of the State of Arizona--not multiple constituencies, as you wrote."

"Also, since the Senator just arrived in the Senate, he has not been a part of the problem of "partisan gridlock" you write about. What's more, if you had done your research, you would see that while he was in the House of Representatives, Senator McCain made it a point to "reach across the aisle" on multiple occasions, just as your letter would have him do."

"I can tell you're a kid and everything, but if you ever want to be taken seriously you should you get your facts straight, especially before you write a letter like this."

I think I said, "Okay, thanks," before he hung up on me. That was it.

"What the hell was that?" I thought to myself.

Whatever my expectations had been for that assignment, one thing I didn't expect was to be taken to task for my (admittedly middling) effort at engaging with my government. I remember feeling as though I had just been kicked in the gut, or had my pants pulled down by a bully from an older class -- neither of which were entirely foreign experiences to me at the time.  

I also recall being astonished at the fact that whoever this guy was, he apparently had nothing better to do than call up a grade-schooler during dinner and yell at him. As the schoolyard saying went at the time, I wondered "Who had piddled on his Post Toasties that morning?"

Now, I'm not defending my letter. Clearly, I hadn't done the homework to do my homework. But it's not like there was an Internet to research anyone's congressional voting record back then, and the assignment simply wasn't worth enough, points-wise, to justify coercing my Mom into taking me to the library (which she would have done).

The perturbed call from McCain's office actually did teach me a valuable lesson in "not talking out of my butt." However, I'm certain I could have learned that same lesson, given the same set of circumstances, without the meanness. Since then, I've dealt with kids in a variety of capacities  (student teacher, camp counselor, etc.) and I can say that, no matter how dumb they act, you're never supposed to treat them like they're stupid.

Mainly, I recall this experience as one of those childhood moments--certainly not my proudest--that sticks around in your memory because, even if you're just a stupid kid, you can see right through a so-called grown-up's behavior:

At that moment, I knew that he handled the call poorly.

I marveled at the fact that I had been yelled at for using a word ("constituencies") that I knew I had used properly. I mean, conceivably, weren't kids one constituency and adults another? Men one, women another? Goldwater Republicans and Udall Democrats? Constituencies.

But mostly, I wondered what sort of jerk Senator McCain must have been to inspire his staff to achieve such levels of jerkiness?

Twenty-something years later, Senator McCain's conduct during his presidential campaign has provided me with the answer to that question: Whether he's furiously taking exception with the assertions of mendacity by the Des Moines Register or referring to his distinguished colleague from the Senate and opponent in his race for the nation's highest office as "That one," one thing is clear about Senator McCain.

He's exactly the sort of guy who would tell one of his minions to rough up a naive 12-year-old constituent by phone.

In short, not much has changed since then... Except the shows on Prime time.

You know, before this morning's talk show barrage, I -- like many of you, I'm sure-- had serious concerns about Sarah Palin's readiness to be commander-in-chief and overall fitness for executive office.

But after watching her defend herself against the likes of Brokaw, Stephanopolous, and Schieffer today I ...

Oh, wait. That's right. She didn't appear on any of the  talk shows this morning, the first firewalk of any serious political contender on the national stage. 

Huh. Wonder why that is?   I mean, if the GOP is as confident in the half-term Governor of the nation's third most populous state's battle-ready condition, wouldn't we have seen her on one of these Sunday morning network institutions? Hell, even Fox News Sunday would have counted, but McSame himself made that appearance instead.

Just an observation. I found Palin's non-appearances this morning to be more telling of Republican confidence in her ability to walk that tightrope than just about anything the GOP meatpuppets have said in praise of her qualifications.

On Meet the Press this morning, Tim Russert engaged David Brooks about his critical NYT op/ed piece on "Obama Comedown Syndrome" -- essentially a rephrasing of the same questions Obama has repeatedly faced about how he'll be able to act on his rhetoric and bring about real change in such an ossified institution as Capitol Hill.

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin offered the following:

"What history argues, and I think this is what [Obama]'s arguing, is that the only time we've had progressive change in this country is when the country is mobilized to push the people in Congress to action. That's what happened in the Progressive movement at the turn of the century, it's what happened during the New Deal, it's what happened in the Sixties, and I think that's what he's arguing-- that 'I can't just get it done by myself, I need to have that movement out there that will push us in Washington -- me and them included,' and that's what I think is the strength of the message [Obama] espouses."

Thank you, Doris Kearns Goodwin, for what I think is just about the most concise and rational response I've heard to the blanket "pixie dust" criticism that has dogged the Obama campaign since it began.

Okay, maybe it wasn't a full-on milkshake drinkage... But it sure seemed to shut Brooks up, didn't it?

According to CNN, 617,710 Virginians cast their vote for Barack Obama today, compared to 344,449 for Clinton.

But what's compelling to me is that the entire Republican primary drew 478,355 votes-- all of them combined.

I'm no statistician, and polls make me nervous. But simple vote totals? To me, they say a great deal:

-Obama drew more people than the entire Republican party could muster. To me, that means he'd win Virginia in a general election.

-Clinton drew more than McCain did (242,216 as of this posting) on his own, but... still less than the entire GOP turnout. So in a general election...

Well, as I said... I'm no statistician. And I'm sure there's some elusive cosmic election theory that would disprove my notion...

But if you were to ask me? I'd say that Obama might just win Virginia-- a state that went 53% for W in 2004-- in a general election, even if McCain were to unite and form a Legion of Doom with the Huckster, RIP Romney, and Racist Ronnie Paul.

And that last part is precisely why people don't ask me about stuff like this.

j

Does anyone have a bead on an online list or resource that would identify these shadowy powerbrokers?

It's been suggested that a letter writing campaign might be in order, but the first hurdle I've encountered is a simple matter of  "WHO?"

Can anyone help?

-jeffrey, still fired up

  I sent the following to my friends and family yesterday with the headline "72 Hours to Change the World-- Blueprint Attached" and included a link and attachment to Obama's BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE.

This is my first post... nice to see y'all.

jeffrey

+
My Friends, Family, and Colleagues...

The truth is I've re-typed this email something like 15 times already, so pretty soon I'll have one draft for each state voting on Tuesday.  I apologize for the semi-mass email, and intruding like this, but ...

But after attending a reception for Barack Obama on Thursday after the debate, I feel like we have the chance to be a part of something incredible, and I think some of my difficulty in finding the words for this email lies in the challenge of channeling the feelings that Barack elicits-- hope, yearning, unity, and imagination -- into a persuasive, adult, political point of view.

It wasn't just seeing him in person, or having bragging rights to having shook his hand, that compels me to write you-- It was being a part of the crowd he drew. If Thursday night was any indicator of what the future could be, then Obama promises us the chance to come together as Americans, and as citizens of planet earth in a way that until now seemed like a fantasy, or some leftover platitude from decades ago. 

But Thursday, we were all there together-- black and white, young and old--  united not because of Obama's personal demographics,  but because when the man speaks, he speaks to what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels" of our human nature.

And that -- that nebulous, unspoken feeling of joining together in support of something bigger than just electing a candidate-- is what differentiates Obama from Clinton.

I sincerely believe that we have an opportunity on Tuesday to make a bold statement as a nation, possibly our one chance for the forseeable future to actually reshuffle the deck that has seemed stacked against (most of) us for as long as we've been alive, and for most of our parents' lives too. It's truly a day in which our optimism, combined with our vote, has the power to drastically reshape Washington from the top down.

Or, it's just another day in America-- a day where we go to the voting booths, make a compromise that might feel more politically realistic, and wind up with yet another administration that seems content to play the game as it is written-- as it has been mastered.

It's up to us. This one time, it's up to us-- we have a clear choice between two candidates whose policies are more or less identical, and yet represent completely different directions for America's politics, and, by extension, America itself.

So: This Tuesday-- Please vote for Change. Vote for Barack Obama. If you're not sure about where he is on the issues, take a few minutes to look at the attached BLUEPRINT FOR CHANGE (http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/ObamaBlueprintForChange.pdf).

And if that doesn't settle your doubts, please call me at 213.422.4843, anytime between now and when you cast your vote, because I want all of you to feel as confident as I do that Barack is the right choice.

Thank you so much for reading.

Yours,

Jeffrey
volunteer precinct captain
obama 2008