Dewey Defeat Obama?

Sadly, I don't. And never will.

If I did I could tell them about what happened way back in 2008. Not much was going on until about October 01, when the stock market went on a wild roller coaster ride and the Federal Government decided to bail out every bank and institution in the world, with the exception of Disney, which I understand is floating money to the US Treasury.

I would tell my unknown grandchildren that about forty percent of my retirement savings vanished. I would tell them that I emailed President George W. Bush and asked for my own private bail out. And tell them I'm still waiting for him to reply -- some thirty years later.

Oh, yes. I'd also tell them about my then city of Chicago neighbor, Barrack Obama. He was running for president. It was a job he really wanted. He was spending almost 600 million dollars to get the job. To each his own. Frankly, spending that much for a job that pays some $400,000 per year with the perk of living in a drafty old house that the British burnt down, makes no sense to me, but Obama saw something most of us didn't.

He had a message of "hope" and "change" and most of his true believers went around chanting "Yes, we can!"

There was no way he wasn't going to get that four hundred grand paycheck and live in the big house. It was a done deal.

I began to wonder, though.

I spent a lot of time in those days driving around the city of Chicago. Chicago is a blue, blue Democratic town. As I drove from hood to hood I noticed something was missing. Even days before the election it was still missing.

I never saw the signs. Or not many of them, anyway.

Where were the "Obama-Biden" yard signs? Where were the same signs on the telephone poles? On fences? Even on car bumpers?

Gone, they were. Gone --no! They were never there.

No signs were jabbed into lawns. No signs hammered on poles. None on the fences. And a scant few on the SUV's or even politically correct Preis cars.

To me, this was a sign. I had remembered the previous elections. Kerry and Edwards and Gore and Leibermann had been all over the blue lawns of Chicago.

Why no sign of Obama-Biden signs?

Once, my grandfather told me about an election in 1948. Democrat Harry Truman was running against Republican Thomas Dewey. Everybody was so sure Dewey would win. He spoke better, he was handsome, and he promised change from nearly 18 years of Democratic control of the White House.

It's a damned shame I don't have any grandchildren to tell my story to -- about how McCain defeated Obama. So, I have to tell you.