So the Nonvoter just had his first birthday, and we survived his first birthday party. There was a lot of domestic panic that everyone would see the house as it normally is and then the little jerk cut off his nap prior to the event, turning into an overtired wreck. But we made it work, and I even got to talk to some parent friends while the Opinion Leader* took a turn dealing with our son. One of them had a baby who was, relatively speaking, angelic. Quiet, content to just check out the place and chew on her own fingers, put up with being held without any struggling/punching/choke holds at ALL. And the mom gave me a look that was oddly familiar. Sympathetic, mildly guilty, relieved.
"I can't even imagine what it's like," she said. "It's stressful enough when she fusses, which isn't often."
The funny thing is, I've seen that look and received that sympathy before. It's just come from Obama staff, specifically their 2008 variety.
We all saw/cursed/applauded Barack Obama's re-election in 2012, and we're all in basic agreement that he had a pretty hard time of it, what with the unemployment and the Tea Party and whatnot. But of course this was not always the case. There was also the Obama of 2008. He didn't just raise money, he DROWNED in it. He had so much cash he did gaudy, ridiculous things like buy an hour-long infomercial, ads in people's Xbox games, and even ads in his opponent's home state just to be an asshole. He won Indiana, for God's sake. For being the first black president he made it look pretty easy.
And of course since he raised infinity money, he hired a bunch of staff, kids and idealists who had no appreciable skills or reason to be on a serious, functional campaign. They hit the political job market in 2009 with their one shiny resume line and were very pleased with themselves. Meanwhile, the rest of us had been working on actual competitive campaigns. The kind where the candidate is kind of a shit and never raises enough money and a zillion dollars in third party** ads drops on your head and god am I even going to get paid? I'm not going to get paid am I. God damn it.
So in the same way my home life has parents of kids who don't attempt ritual murder-suicide at every nap time, my work life has those people who don't get that politics is, in the median, a discouraging, unpleasant occupation. We don't get the choice of working for the inspiring guy, just like we don't get the choice of putting the Nonvoter back to sleep for the third time that hour, at 3 am. It's nice when it's rewarding, but a lot of the time it's not.
Of course, there's no point begrudging people good luck. And the fact is it doesn't matter in the long term. The 2010 elections made all of us Democrats assholes anyway. And any given parent might have a sleep-through-the-night wonder baby today, but sooner or later he's going to have a nightmare toddler, or teenager, or whatever. We all got it coming; some of us just get it a lot earlier and harder.
*Ie, my wife
**527s, super pacs, you get the idea
No comments:
Post a Comment