Blog from San Francisco

The other day, on my visit here, I stepped into an elevator with my four-year-old daughter, Mariana. She looked the tiny, unfamiliar room over for a minute as we waited for it to lift us up a couple of flights and then asked me, “Dada, what is this?” I have felt the same way a lot of the time I have been here in California these past two weeks.

My visit here has been a run through the touchstones of the US experience. I went “Trick or Treating” (which is an actual verb) in Southern California and got to see my little one experience the true joy of dressing up in a poofy pink princess dress and, in the experienced company of older cousins, have dozens of strangers give her a bagful of candy. I was radiant as a Catholic Nun (and perhaps if there is enough request we’ll run that photo on the Blog) and made off with all of my daughter’s Butterfingers. I love Halloween.

We spent a full day at Disneyland, where no ride could compare to the joy of meeting the real Ariel (the Little Mermaid, for those not in the know about such things). It turns out the real Winnie the Pooh, real Tigger and real Mickey Mouse all live there. Who knew?

My eldest daughter Elly, who is twenty, guided me through the other Disneyland-like experience, visits to California shopping malls, which I admit overwhelmed me and made me long for the more stinky and wild environments of La Cancha in Cochabamba, where stalls of women’s blouses mingle with hanging llama fetuses for sale.

Many people here have spaceship-like command centers in their sparkly new cars that offer drivers minute-to-minute directions on how to best arrive at their destination. We have that in Cochabamba too. Taxi drivers open up their windows and shout to passers by, “Donde esta Calle Uriquidi, sabes?” The second one, while less reliable (A note for Cochabamba visitors: always ask for directions three times and go with whatever advice you get twice) is more friendly.

And I was here, of course, for the US elections.

Watching a TV of any kind is always an experience for me since I haven’t owned one for eight years (and have never actually bought one) but watching TV in California during the closing days of the election was something else altogether. Wall to wall ads each one trying to up the next as a measure of how badly people can waste money.

There were the ads for Cruz Bustamante, the notoriously chubby Lt. Governor who staked his campaign for State Insurance Commissioner on the fact that he had lost a lot of weight. “I made a promise to my family that I would lose 70 pounds and I did,” he declared into the camera. “And I will keep my promise to you as well...” Later an LA Times reporter brought a scale to an interview and made the candidate weigh himself to see if his boast was exaggerated (it was). Really, I am not making this up. My friend Nettie coined the slogan, Lose with Cruz, and he did. So much for mixing Jenny Craig with campaigning.

My old friend Phil Angelides, part of a small group of guys I hung out with in my 20s when we were all young staffers together at the State Capitol, gave everyone a lesson in how not to run for governor. When I saw his ads walking amidst cardboard cutouts of Arnold and throwing around wincingly contrived stuff like, “And the winner for impersonating a Governor...” I wanted to reach into the TV set, slap him around a bit and say, “Phil, just be real for a minute and tell us what you want to do if you get elected.” Getting real is not what running for office is about here these days. With the millions Phil blew running for Governor for a year he could have taken everyone in Bolivia out to lunch – a good lunch, we’re talking a big plate of meatballs and chuno at the comedor in Cochabamba – for three days in a row.

That would be a good campaign ad. “Hi, my name is Phil Angelides. This will be the only TV ad from me you will see this year. Instead, I am spending all my campaign funds to take everyone in Bolivia out to lunch three times. I think it is a better use of the money. I’ll govern California the same way. Oh, Cruz Bustamante, if it fits with your diet you can come too.” Instead all the TV stations got the money.

George Bush also showed us how to lose an election. Take the country to war on a lie and then tell us we have to stay the course. His Texas predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had similar success with the same formula in Vietnam forty years ago. We now have scientific evidence that collective amnesia in the US takes forty years to mature. But now people here are waking up to the war and Democrats rode the wave.

Too bad Democrats won’t actually end the war. Many will try to use the new majorities to do so but the safer political course is to not rock the boat too much and let the war linger like an albatross around the Republicans' neck for another two years in hopes that the White House too will become a Democratic conquest and the Democrats can have the war all to themselves. This is the formula by which quagmires linger.

There is a parallel to Bolivia here that I drew before the packed crowds that came to hear about Bolivia this week when I spoke at UC Berkeley and at New College in San Francisco. In December of last year MAS backers were euphoric at Evo’s victory. This week Democrats in the city of the new House Speaker are similarly joyous about the return of the Congress to Democratic hands. A year later many in Bolivia are disenchanted and MAS has learned how much easier it is to win a vote than to put together the government you promised. Soon Democrats in the US will see how easily their victory gets bogged down in the politics of timidity.

Here is what I said to my audiences here this week. Bolivia teaches us that democracy is about more than elections. It is about people following what is going on and taking action to make governments accountable to their people. It is about not losing sense of right and wrong.

Halloween is wonderful. Disneyland was fun. Shopping malls are convenient. Peet’s coffee is tasty. Bagels are God’s gift. But the comfort lulls us too easily into believing that we have done our political duty by punching the card and relishing victory at the polls. The war goes on. The war based on a lie.

Hold their feet to the fire my countrymen and countrywomen. End the war as quickly as possible. That, more than the election results on Tuesday, is the first step toward putting my country back on a track as moral and good as the people who live here.