Amy Cooper - It's Not How Well They Bowl Or Drink

It's not how well they bowl or drink
By Amy Cooper
Special to the Star-Telegram
"Could we please take the Obama sign out of the yard now?" my spouse asks as he walks around Obama 08.
"But he's my guy," I explain.
"Come on. Our neighbors will think we're anti-American," he says. "Could you at least take it down before Shelly's soccer car pool comes?"
"Maybe, but don't think of me as a 'soccer mom' anymore. Call me an 'Obama Mama.'"
"I didn't know you knew his mama."
"Not personally," I reply, "but close enough. He's got a white grandmother who would save rubber bands by hanging them around the doorknob."
"That makes him presidential?"
"Don't you remember?" I ask. "I had a white grandmother who reused aluminum foil. She'd iron it out and recycle it for casseroles. We have a connection."
"But aren't all of your grandmothers white?"
"You are missing the point -- this is the post-racial candidate," I explain.
"Tell that to his pastor."
The luster is off. No matter which candidate you chose, you are apologizing for that choice a few months later. Worse still, I am at the crossroads of inane and absurd, choosing a presidential candidate based on nostalgia for reused tinfoil. I'll claim my absurdity but would argue that I've had help arriving here.
If campaigns are measured in dog years -- and this one surely is -- we're well into the seventh year. Comprehensive healthcare and foreign policy have been traded in for faux sniper fire and bitter gun-toters, traded in for bowling and shot drinking. In the candidates' attempts to connect to voters, policy has been slighted.
Give me a candidate who will admit that the old categories have broken down. Give me a candidate who will recognize that foreign policy and our own economy aren't separate entities.
In a globalized economy, it matters that iron ore from Brazil and Australia experienced a 65 percent price increase this year. These countries control more than 70 percent of the global supply; their major client is not the U.S. but China.
When we pay double for our Ford vehicles in four months, it will have had little to do with what has gone on within our borders. We are a debtor nation that can no longer claim unilateral superiority.
How long will other nations want to finance U.S. consumption? Not long, especially when there is a new, growing middle class (read: China) just as eager to consume as we are. Which candidate is willing to say that while executive power has increased in the Bush administration, presidential power outside our own borders has weakened?
Who is strong enough to admit we are vulnerable?
I must admit, though, that it's more fun to analyze campaign tactics than global economics.
As I remove Obama from the yard, I explain to my husband, "It's like they all want to date me."
Sighing, he remarks, "If you are dating Hillary, we will have to move."
Ignoring him, I press on with my analogy.
"Remember back when we were dating and I went to four hockey games in a week? Have I been to a single hockey game since we married? You think Obama will ever bowl again?"
"Remember the time I ate shrimp tails to help you close a deal?" he asks. "You think Hillary will ever down another shot?"
"You were guilty, too," I insist, "feigning an interest in Ryan-Hanks chick flicks while we were dating. Now we watch things blow up together."
"Well, my guy is McCain. Is he dating us?" my spouse asks as Obama is hidden away in the garage.
"All he has to do is say 'Hanoi Hilton' and we all swoon," I argue. "But I will concede moral authority to him."
I pause to let the depth of my presidential campaign analysis sink in. "You know what my mama says, though, about choosing a husband, don't you?
"She always told me that it's different than dating: It's not how well they dance or tell a joke -- it's how they feel about God, money and a sick baby crying in the middle of the night."
Wake up, candidates. There's a sick baby crying in the night, and there's no affordable gas to take her to the doctor, no affordable healthcare to pay for the visit, no affordable formula to get her through the night.

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