Two childhood memories:
President Johnson threw a party on the White House lawn for all the children of all the US Senators. We were the grandchildren of one, and we lived close by in Bethesda; we got to go.  The crowd of kids walked in a careful line through a small part of the White House first, and just before we exited into the Rose Garden area, we were handed an extremely cool official plastic white pen with blue and red retractible colors and the words “The White House” printed on the side. You better believe I took that one to my elementary school to show off.
There was a small Ferris wheel set up on the expanse of lawn, which looked a lot bigger as a kid than it does to me now, and rides on the small ponies being walked in circles. No way no how was I getting on that Ferris wheel, but I was in heaven with those horses. I’m sure there was cotton candy and the like, but I remember nothing about the food–just the fact that I could ride all afternoon, and did, and only briefly once did anybody tell me I had to get off to let some other kid have a turn. They had enough ponies to make every child who wanted one happy for just about as long as they wanted.
I came home and told my mom how cool I thought President Johnson was, and that I hoped he would run and win again.
I saw the look on my mother’s face in speechless response, and had no idea what to make of it, other than that, clearly, this was not the great desire of her heart. But I wanted more pony rides!
Memory number two:
It was the Fourth of July, the late 60’s, and our baby boomer family with six young kids was going with my aunt and uncle and their little ones to watch the fireworks together on the Mall in downtown Washington, DC, the grassy stretch that runs between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The crowd was already huge in the late afternoon as we arrived, the best spots taken hours earlier and more people pouring in by the minute. Soon there was hardly room to move. There was a sit-in of war protesters going on a little further down, with families on their picnic blankets edging right up against ours and a kind of a temporary no-man’s land in between us and the protesters that was rapidly filling up. There were a lot of people there. There was a strong smoke smell going on over thataway that I didn’t recognize at that age; it wasn’t cigarettes.
A number of Park Police on horseback started an ambling pace towards the protesters. I noticed–I liked the horses.
And the protesters started running. En masse. But there was simply no room.
My aunt’s youngest was an infant, and in the sudden terrifying confusion of the stampede, there was a moment of instant clarity: she had pulled a young man down to the ground in front of her and was screaming into his face at the top of her mother-bear lungs as the surge of feet continued around and over and straight through us, “YOU STEPPED ON MY *BABY*!!!!”
He was suddenly more scared of her than the cops or horse hooves and wrestled himself away from her and took off amongst the others still running through our picnic blanket.
That was it. All the adults announced we were out of there, and while the older kids were half-protesting, what, no fireworks, it was a relief to leave. I’m sure we had seen enough fireworks already in my aunt’s face. The baby was okay.
Watching McCain stepping back out of reach and deliberately away from Obama’s outstretched hand and smile, it hit me that here is a man who does not know how to be friends with his friends. How on earth then can he wage peace in an unfriendly world using the skills of diplomacy he does not have? “Bomb bomb bomb Iran. Who cares? The Iranians?” (I’ve seen the video, sir, it was not the one-on-one joke you claimed in the debates, it was before a crowd.)
Imagine the good we could do if Iranian parents (and others), their leadership aside, felt that the mighty US wanted to make the world a better place for their children, too, rather than they worry that our leader wants to trample them personally out of mob-like fear. Imagine the American President telling them that he, too, had gone if only briefly to a public school in a Muslim country; that he knew personally that there were dedicated teachers there and here’s how he’d like to help them improve their educational resources.
Amy Goodman, the syndicated columnist, wrote this article after being violently assaulted by the police for trying to interview protesters at the Republican National Convention. Along with her fellow reporters, her press credentials were ripped off her neck for telling the cops who she was and who her fellows were, and then *she* was charged for it and hauled off, along with her fellows, who were bleeding. They were told after they were beaten that they had the right to cover the police’s work only if they were embedded with them, ie only if they went where they were allowed to go and saw what they were allowed to see.
Alright. Voters? We have been through this before. We thought Simon and Garfunkel’s protests, “I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera” were quaint old songs now. Back to the future?
Or do we choose a better one?
My ballot says mark it with blue or black ink only, don’t use the red.
Done.