You can go home again

...if only for the afternoon.

Yesterday I accompanied some of my compatriots from last spring's Abate for Congress campaign down to Union County to canvass for Linda Stender, who had actively sought our help. It was a great opportunity to revisit the neighborhood in which I spent much of my childhood and all of my adolescence. The family had moved out in 1987, and it had been at least eight years since I'd been back for a drive-through. Last time I'd driven through, the neighborhood looked old and tired, but this time it had been significantly spruced up.

It seems that a single builder has not only remodeled many of the houses on the circle, but has been doing bash-and builds, but instead of replacing the houses with the charmless, stucco-front McMansions that are blighting the landscape in Bergen County, he's replacing them with neo-Queen Annes, Victorians, and Williamsburg-type colonials, and four-squares, with details such as wide porches, gables, and eyebrow windows. And most importantly, the trees are being retained, so the character of the neighborhood remains. I've decried bash-and-build where I live now, and of course there's the issue of who on earth is going to be able to afford these houses, but it's harder to hate this kind of effort when the product is as beautiful, without being at all ostentatious, as what's going on back where I spent my childhood.

Of more interest was the response we found while canvassing. The most disheartening finding was just how unenaged so many suburbanites still are about the world around them. It astounds me how adults with children can willfully close their eyes when their children's future is at stake. Most of the parents of young children we spoke with were apolitical, freely admitted to being not just uninformed, but uncaring, and weren't planning to vote. It's easy to just live in a little suburban cocoon, one or two generations removed from the days when kids like me attached Beatle cards to our bicycle spokes with clothespins to make them sound like motorcycles, and pretend that life for your kids is going to be the same as yours. Most of these people believe that the government shouldn't control what people do with their bodies, they support Social Security, and they want government to do what it does well and stay out of where it doesn't blong. But by remaining uninformed, they don't see that their children's future is going to resemble Mad Max more than the mid-1960's. The biggest challenge for Democrats is how to get these people to believe that they have a stake in the poligical process.

The other interesting people we encountered were staunch Republicans disgusted with Bush, disgusted with Congress, and yet unwilling to vote for Democrats. These people, every one of them polite and NOT emulating the right-wing shriekers they no doubt listened to, had obviously thought their positions through and reminded us that even when intelligent people of goodwill disagree, they can each have the nation's best interests at heart. For these people, some of whom were homophobic, some of whom were retirees who nevertheless supported privatization of Social Security, still thought all incumbents should be voted out.

What we found was a hunger for straight talk, for honesty, for politicians to tell them the truth, because if these affluent suburbanites are any indication, the alienation from the process comes from the mountains of crap that have been spewing for politicians' mouths. It's no longer about right and left for these people, it's about right and wrong. One older gentleman, who had fought in both WWII and Korea, told us he'd voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, for all that he didn't agree with some of his liberal positions, because he was a "good man who fought for his country." I had the sense that most of them would vote for someone with whom they didn't always agree -- if they had a sense that the candidate was at least true to what he or she said.

Then this morning I was greeted with a radio ad for Tom Kean, Jr. that made Bob Menendez sound like he'd committed every crime in human history except kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, fixing the 1919 World Series, and crucifying Jesus -- and the jury was still out on those. This ad was so over-the-top it reminded me of that old Al Franken/Tom Davis "Pete Tagliani" sketch from SNL. So it looks like we won't find any authenticity this year, at least.