The future of New Orleans

As the floodwaters are pumped out and the decomposing bodies are collected, the slow and difficult task of rebuilding this ruined city will begin. Amid the wall-to-wall media coverage of the aftermath of Katrina – an event which will almost certainly go down as the worst natural disaster in this nation’s history – a great deal of discussion regarding the future of New Orleans, and by extension the entire Gulf Coast, is occurring. What will a rebuilt New Orleans look like? Will it be able to retain its unique culture in the wake of this calamity? How many people will return to the city? Should the city, which sits below sea level, be rebuilt at all? These questions have spawned numerous articles in numerous publications, from the Boston Globe to the Chicago Tribune to the Dallas Morning News to USA Today. Even local bloggers are engaging in the discussion.

Most fundamentally, does it make sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild the flooded city at all? Jack Shafer at slate.com says "no" while George Friedman at stratfor.com says “yes.” Friedman’s argument is that New Orleans “is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist” due to its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River. There needs to be a place where the river barges carrying goods and materials from the Great Plains and the Midwest are  offloaded onto ocean-going vessels, and vice-versa. The Port of New Orleans is critically important to our nation’s economy, and for that reason the city that supports it will return, “because it has to.”

Even if New Orleans is rebuilt – and I think that much of it will be – it will clearly never be the same city it was before Katrina obliterated it. For one, it will be much smaller. It’s impossible to stay at this time just how many of those who called New Orleans home on August 28th will return once it is safe to do so, but it is clear that many of those who have left – some having been evacuated to places as far away as Utah or Alaska – have nothing to return to and very likely will not be coming back. Those that do return to the region are likely to choose a location that is not as vulnerable to tropical storms. That’s why I believe that Baton Rouge, which in the same general region but many miles upriver from New Orleans, and whose population has been swelled by refugees from New Orleans, will probably eventually surpass New Orleans to become Louisiana’s largest and most dominant city, much the same way Houston overtook Galveston to become Texas’s major city after the 1900 Hurricane. 

Houston’s future, likewise, will almost certainly be different. A New York Times article (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune) declares that “no city in the United States is in a better spot to turn Katrina’s tragedy into opportunity” and notes that corporations are already moving their headquarters from New Orleans to Houston, even if only on a temporary basis. Added to this is the influx of tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans, many of whom are likely to stay. There will be a short-term economic boost as evacuated businesses fill vacant office space, evacuated residents fill empty residential space, and millions of dollars in federal aid for the displaced flows into Houston. The long-term economic, demographic and cultural effects of Katrina on Houston are less clear but are nonetheless likely to be positive. And the positive coverage Houston has received from the media regarding the city’s generosity and compassion for the victims of Katrina is likely to boost the city’s national image as well. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.  Unfortunately, a lot of these links are now dead. The tenth anniversary of Katrina is approaching and I will probably write something about it later this week.)

Ecuador dumps another president

Last week, the National Congress in Quito ousted former army colonel Lucio Gutierrez, who had been in office since 2003, amid widespread anti-government protests in Quito. Gutierrez has since fled to Brazil and vice-president Alfredo Palacio has been sworn in as the Andean nation's head of state. Palacio becomes Ecuador's eighth leader in ten years (more details below); no president has been allowed to finish a four-year term of office since 1996. According to The Independent, Ecuador is now officially the most policially unstable nation in South America. And that's no small feat, considering that political crisis and Latin America seem to go hand in hand. 
 

Ironically, Lucio Gutierrez was one of the leaders of the January 2000 coup that deposed Jamil Mahuad. That coup was caused by widespread opposition to Mahaud's plan to dollarize the economy following the nation's 1999 economic meltdown. Economic instability doesn't seem to be an underlying cause of Gutierrez's ouster, however; the country's economy grew by 6 percent last year, and the nation has benefitted from high oil prices. Instead, this most recent round of political instability appears to be due to the Ecuadorean population's growing frustration with corrupt politicians, as a story in today's Chronicle notes:

[Critics] point out that Gutierrez campaigned for the presidency on a populist, anti-corruption platform. But once in office, they contend, Gutierrez approved harsh economic austerity measures, installed family members in government posts and cut deals with corrupt politicians rather than jailing them.

"You give them your trust, and they do the exact opposite of what they promise," said Carlos Tamayo, a taxi driver in Quito. "They suck the blood of the people like bats."

Indeed, the nation's political infrastructure is rife with corrpution - the watchdog group Transparency International claims that Ecuador is one of the most corrupt nations in the region. What really seemed to upset the Ecuadorean people, however, was Lucio's deal with exiled former president Abdala Bucaram and his populist PRE party (for more information on Abdala, see my 1997 Daily Cougar column about him):

The move that seemed to seal Gutierrez's fate was his temporary alliance with Abdala Bucaram, a former president who fled to Panama after being ousted from office in a 1997 uprising.

Pro-Bucaram legislators briefly gave Gutierrez a razor-thin majority in Congress. Gutierrez persuaded lawmakers to fire the Supreme Court and then reconstituted the judicial body with his cronies. The new court annulled corruption convictions against Bucaram, paving the way for the ex-president to return to Ecuador earlier this month.

The move sparked a wave or protests that came to a head Wednesday. Fearing a blood bath if they were ordered to fire on demonstrators, Ecuador's army and police withdrew their support from Gutierrez, and the Congress voted to dismiss him.

"The person who violated the constitution was the president," said Gustavo Larrea, director of the independent Latin American Human Rights Association in Quito. "The people were calling for a return to a state of law. This was an exercise in direct democracy."

The Chronicle article, however, focuses on the possibility that these "exercises in direct democracy" that seem to be occurring with increased frequency in Latin America are not necessarily a good thing, because they are little more than incidences of mob rule mentality. Don't like the president? Then there's no reason to wait until his term of office is up - just take to the streets and force him out of office! Rather than being an affirmation of democracy, these uprisings could really be nothing more than events that undermine the democratic process and foment political instability:

[John] Walsh, of the Washington Office on Latin America, said people power doesn't necessarily lead to more democracy.

"Mob rule lends itself to any configuration," Walsh said. "The next time it happens, (people) might not agree with the result, and, in that sense, it's very dangerous."

Given the dangers of "mobocracy," however, I can fully understand the frustration of the Ecuadorean people and their propensity to take to the streets. Ecuador's leaders, democratically-elected as they might be, have collectively done very little to improve the impoverished nation's standard of living. As I noted in following my most recent trip to Ecuador, "the things that needed to have changed the most - the poverty, the lack of basic infrastructure, the corruption, the pollution - are still the same. It's depressing, since the country really doesn't seem to be better off than it was fifteen years ago, when I first visited." Contrast this to Mexico, the other Latin American nation I visit frequently, which, while still very impoverished, is clearly progressing economically and politically. Corrpution is waning, the infrastructure is improving and a middle class is emerging in Mexico. The same cannot be said for Ecuador, unfortunately...

Since Ecuador moved from a military dictatorship to a civilian democracy in 1979, the country has experienced the following results:

Jaime Roldos: 1979 - 1981: Killed in a plane crash shortly into his term

Osvaldo Hurtado 1981 - 1984: Finished Roldos's term; he left office right as a nasty El Niño and the oil bust decimated Ecuador's economy

Leon Febres-Cordero 1984 - 1988: This guy was lucky he survived a full term, considering the mess that the economy was in while he was president. He did spend an evening as a prisoner at a Guayaquil air force base during a failed coup attempt

Rodrigo Borja 1988 - 1992: The leader of the Izquierda Democratica (Leftist Democrat) party fancied himself as an enlightened neo-Marxist reformer - until his party's congressional majority was wiped out in 1990 mid-term elections

Sixto Duran 1992 - 1996: This Boston-born architect was Ecuador's last president to serve a full term; he presided over a short border war with Peru in 1995 (Jimmy Carter intervened and the two nations later signed a peace treaty)

Abdala Bucaram 1996 - 1997: It wasn't hard for the National Congress to dismiss this Guayaquil populist on grounds of "mental incapacity" - his preferred nickname was "El Loco" and he released an album entitled "A Madman in Love" shortly after his election

Rosalia Arteaga - 1997: She served as interim president for a few days, becoming Ecuador's first female head of state in the process

 

Fabian Alacran 1997 - 1998: Caretaker president appointed by Congress until new elections were held; he left office during the devastating 1998 El Nino and the Asian economic meltdown and subsequent oil crash

Jamil Mahuad 1998 - 2000: Ecuador's economy collapsed during his presidency; he was forced out by a coup led by junior military officers and indigenous leaders 

Gustavo Naboa 2000 - 2003: Tried to rebuild Ecuador's economy by pressing ahead with Mahuad's reforms, including dollarization. Ecuador's official currency is now the US Dollar

Lucio Gutierrez 2003 - 2005: One of the army colonels who participated in the 2000 coup now finds himself on the other end of the wrath

Alfredo Palacio 2005 - ???: Good luck, Al. You're going to need it!

If this political instability continues, Ecuador should consider changing its national anthem from Salve O Patria to Won't Get Fooled Again... 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Palacio finished his term but was replaced by Rafael Correa in the subsequent election. Although Correa's left-leaning, authoritarian administration has been controversial, it has also resulted in the longest period of political stability in Ecuador since the mid-90s; Correa was re-elected in 2013.)

Boogie down at the UNT library!

One of the largest collections of disco music in the academic world can be found in the library of the University of North Texas. The Denton-Record Chronicle explains: 

Even Morris Martin, librarian of UNT’s music library, is unsure how many records are in the Bert Hile Collection, as it is formally known, though the number is probably well above the university’s Web site estimate of 2,500.

The amount of scholarly interest is easier to count.

"Hardly any, frankly," he said.

Part of the problem, Martin said, is that the collection has never been cataloged, which would make it more accessible to researchers. Another reason is that few musicologists are willing to invest their careers researching lyrics such as:

"Shake it/Doo, doo, doo, whoa/Shake it/Doo, doo, doo, whoa/Shake your groove thing/Shake your groove thing."

The tracks were donated by Bert Hile, who was a deejay at popular Dallas-area disco clubs in the late 70s. He reflects on the demise of the era of mirror balls and polyester leisure suits:

Disco is said to have died on Feb. 3, 1980, the day New York’s Studio 54 closed. But Hile said its fate was sealed by a movie released three years earlier.

"Saturday Night Fever is what killed disco. It ran it into the ground," he said. "You know how when you have a scratch and you keep itching and itching until it starts to bleed? Well, that’s what happened to disco. It got overplayed."

The article ends with Dallas Morning News music critic Mario Tarradell listing what in his opinion are the five best and five worst disco songs. The five best:

1. "Got to Be Real," Cheryl Lynn
2. "This Time Baby," Jackie Moore
3. "I Feel Love," Donna Summer
4. "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," Barry White
5. "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," Sylvester

And the five worst:

1. "Disco Duck," Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots
2. "Get Dancin'," Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes
3. "Ring My Bell," Anita Ward
4. "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty," KC and the Sunshine Band
5. "Macho Man," Village People

Can't say I really disagree with any of Tarradell's picks - I especially agree with his selection of "I Feel Love" as one of the five best. Kraftwerk may have pioneered the genre of electronic music, but Giorgio Moroder gave it a sound with this song. The eerie synthesizer chords, the galloping baseline, Donna Summer's sparse yet sexy lyrics... An all-around awesome tune. Here are a few other tunes that would be on my personal list of best disco songs: 

"Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," Michael Jackson: the younger generation might not believe this, but a long, long time ago, before he became a bleached, plastic freak of nature who (allegedly) molested cancer-stricken young boys or dangled babies out of hotel windows, Wacko Jacko actually made some great music. If this whirlwind of a song didn't get you off the couch and onto the plexiglass dance floor with the blinking lights underneath, you simply didn't have a pulse.

"I Will Survive," Gloria Gaynor: This disco standard had a message as well as a beat. Her man left her, but she "was strong, and learned how to get along" without him. When he returns, she tells him off with a voice and a brilliance that is nothing short of triumphant.

"Born to Be Alive," Patrick Hernandez: this is the quintessential disco song, incorporating a thumping beat, teeth-sucking cymbals, synthesized baseline, guitars, horns, strings, backing vocals, the nonsensical lyrics, the works. When this piece of vinyl hit the turntable, it was indeed "good to be alive." I'd have to say that this song is, in my 

opinion, the greatest disco song ever recorded.

Of course, I didn't exactly experience the disco scene first hand - I was a bit young for that, although I do remember, as a five or six year old kid, hearing a lot of these tunes on the radio as I rode around in the car with my mom. Throughout my childhood and teen years, disco was considered "trash" and nobody played it; it didn't get popular again until the early 1990s, and that's when I started paying attention to to the music. I realized that, contrary to what the bumper stickers of the early 80s claimed, not all disco sucked. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

Wrapping up the 2004 college football season

The 2004 college football season ended in a rout Tuesday night, as the USC Trojans flattened the previously unbeaten Oklahoma Sooners 55-19 to win the FedEx Orange Bowl and claim the Mythical National Championship for the 2004 college football season. I don’t think anybody was expecting the game to be as lopsided as it was; the Sooners just didn’t seem to be prepared for USC’s relentless offense (this year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Matt Leinart, threw five touchdown passes) and made too many mistakes (last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jason White, threw three interceptions) on their way to their second consecutive BCS title game meltdown. I really didn’t care who won; I just wanted to see a good game. Needless to say, I, like millions of other college football fans, was disappointed. 

Auburn fans are probably especially cranky today; given last night’s performance, they no doubt believe that their undefeated Tigers, who beat Virginia Tech in Monday night’s Sugar Bowl but were left out of a shot at the national title, would have given the Trojans a better game. The Rose Bowl, on the other hand, was a classic. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the 5th-ranked Longhorns probably should have beaten the 12th-ranked Wolverines by more than a point, and ignoring for a second the pathetic whining to the media Mack Brown did in order to get his team there instead of California, the game itself, replete with spectacular performances from players like UT’s Vincent Young or Michigan’s Braylon Edwards, was one of the most thrilling and complete college football games in recent memory.

Like it or not, whiny Mack Brown was vindicated. Not only did the ‘Horns win the Rose Bowl, but the 4th-ranked Cal Golden Bears were embarrassed by 23rd-ranked Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl. I know Cal was not happy to be playing in this game, but a big win here would have made a statement; a loss makes them look like pretenders. Too bad Mack can’t beat Oklahoma or win a conference championship…

Other notable bowl games included the Capital One Bowl on New Year’s Day; 11th-ranked Iowa defeated 12th-ranked LSU 30-25 on a 56-yard touchdown pass as time expired. A pretty amazing finish, considering that LSU overcame a 12-point deficit in the fourth quarter to take a 25-24 lead with 46 seconds left to play. The New Year’s Eve Liberty Bowl between 8th-ranked Louisville and 10th-ranked Boise State was also a thriller. The matchup between the two highest-ranked non-BCS schools was expected to be an offensive showdown, and it did not disappoint. Louisville won the see-saw battle, 44-40, to give Boise State its first loss of the year.

Steve Casburn and I went to see the EV1.net Houston Bowl on Wednesday afternoon. Colorado and UTEP were evenly matched for a while but as the game progressed the Buffs’ strength and depth began to take over. Colorado won 33 to 28 in an entertaining, back-and-forth game.

The announced attendance for this game was 27,235. There just wasn’t a lot of local interest in this matchup, and the game’s start time of 3:30 pm didn’t make it easy for people to attend either. UTEP did their part, however, bringing several thousand fans and their entire band with them; their fans filled the entire west side of the field boxes. The Colorado contingent was perhaps only a fourth or a fifth as large. Colorado didn’t bring their entire band, either, although they did bring Ralphie the Bison with them.

Steve and I originally had tickets on the upper endzone, but we were asked by Reliant staff if we wanted to move down to the lower endzone seats; they clearly wanted to make the crowd look bigger for the ESPN cameras. We took up their offer and moved; the view wasn’t quite as good, however, and there was simply no way to make the stadium look “full” no matter how many fans were moved around. 

So ends the 2004 college football season. Hopefully 2005 will be a better one for my Houston Cougars. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

On becoming homeowners

Although it probably won't completely sink in until I write that first mortgage payment, Lori and I are now officially homeowners. We closed on our house, in the same University Oaks neighborhood where I grew up (my parents still live two blocks away), last Wednesday.

Since our lease here in Midtown runs through the end of February, we have a couple of months to do some remodeling before we move in. Which is good, because the heater needs to be replaced, the kitchen (which lacks a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and a stove that actually works) needs a complete facelift, the yard could use some landscaping, Kirby's room needs to be painted, the leaky sunroom roof needs to be replaced, the downstairs bathroom needs immediate attention, etc. The joys of homeownership!

Lori and I are looking forward to it, however; we're glad to finally have a place we can call our own.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. That old house has become a veritable money pit in the years since, but it became Lori's after the divorce, so it's not my problem anymore!)

White Christmas

That's something I never thought I'd see here in Houston, so I never even bothered to dream about it!

It was very cool; Lori, Kirby and I were eating tapas with my parents at Mi Luna restaurant in Rice Village when the flakes started falling Christmas Eve, and the flurries continued throughout the evening. Here in Midtown, the snow didn't completely melt from lawns, rooftops and parking garages until well into Christmas morning.

It made for a truly memorable holiday; I doubt I'll ever see a Christmas snowfall in Houston again in my lifetime.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Houston has only seen a couple of snowfalls since, and certainly no more White Christmases.)

Bowl season begins with Mean Green defeat

Bowl season began yesterday evening, with North Texas and Southern Miss squaring off in the Wyndham New Orleans Bowl. Lori and I watched part of the game with other Houston-area UNT alumni at Noche restaurant on Montrose, but the game didn’t turn out to be very watchable. The Golden Eagles dominated the Mean Green 31-10; the score would have looked worse had North Texas not scored a touchdown on the last play of the game. This is UNT’s third loss in four consecutive New Orleans Bowl appearances; Darrell Dickey’s squad continues to be unable to win games out of conference.

To be fair to the Mean Green, they’ve had a rough season. Quarterback Andrew Smith was killed in a car crash shortly before the season started; Chronicle columnist John Lopez wrote a good article about the tragedy and local furniture mogul (and UNT alum) Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale’s response to it. The Mean Green then began the season with four straight losses. To their credit, however, they overcame these setbacks to dominate the Sun Belt conference for the fourth year in a row; they haven’t lost a conference game since 2001.

However, the Mean Green must find a way to begin winning out of conference; last night’s performance against a decent but not invincible Southern Miss team was simply unimpressive.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

The VCR meets the dustbin of history

The show’s over for the VCR, at least at one British electronics chain. Dixon says that demand for videocassette recorders has fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s, while sales of DVD players have increased exponentially. Thus, after this Christmas, VCRs will no longer grace the store’s shelves. The format is becoming obsolete, and more retailers, including those here in the United States, will follow Dixon’s lead in the coming years. By this time ten years from now the video cassette will be just as much of an obscure anachronism as the vinyl LP or Super 8 movie film. 

If you’re somebody who likes to ponder the effect of technology on culture, then the videocassette is certainly a good place to start. When this technology became available to the consumer beginning in the late ‘70s, it revolutionized the way people watched TV. People were now able to record their favorite shows and watch them whenever they wanted; they were no longer at the mercy of network broadcasting schedules and, much to the chagrin of advertisers, all those annoying commercials could be bypassed with the push of the fast-forward button. A person with cable could even record movies from HBO or Showtime and watch them at his or her leisure. Although Hollywood initially worried that the rise of the VCR would lead to rampant movie piracy or impact the take at the box office as people decided to wait until movies came out on video, in the end the movie industry had no choice but to embrace the format. This led to the rise of the video store; people could now go out and rent whatever movie they wanted to see and watch it whenever they wished. Rentals weren’t limited to movies, either; there were documentaries, self-help tapes, educational tapes, do-it-yourself home improvement tapes – the VCR made a vast new realm of information readily available to the public. 

With the videocassette also came the widespread availability of video cameras. Families could now videotape the Christmas get-together or the kid’s basketball game and then immediately watch themselves on TV. There was no more waiting for Super 8 cartridges to be developed and no more fighting with the movie projector. Home movies became home videos. Furthermore, a person with a video camera could record anything and everything as it happened and immediately have the footage available for the world to see. Amateur footage became news; if the most famous amateur 8 mm film in history is the Zapruder footage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, then the most famous amateur videotape in history is the 1991 footage of Rodney King being savagely beaten by several Los Angeles police officers - images that would eventually spark one of the biggest and ugliest riots in modern American history. 

However, technology always marches forward, and by the end of the 1990s new digital media, which offered superior quality to the analog videotape, was beginning to make its way into the consumer market. The DVD player and the digital video camera have now overtaken the VCR, and the videocassette, as revolutionary as it might have once been, is seeing its final days as a technological staple of our culture.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Ten years later, and I still haven't transferred by old VHS home videos to digital media. I guess I should hurry and get that done.)

A lousy end to a lousy season

The University of Houston Cougars ended their disappointing 2004 campaign with a 27-65 loss to Louisville last Saturday at Robertson Stadium. The Coogs were actually able to keep the score close for much of the game and only trailed the 11-ranked Cardinals 27-35 early into the fourth quarter. But the Cardinals scored 30 points in the fourth quarter, including two points on a safety resulting from a bad Cougar snap, and the Cougars ended a sour season on a sour note. 

The 2004 season was, needless to stay, a huge step backward from the success of 2003. A grossly unfavorable schedule, combined with the loss of several key players to graduation, academic ineligibility or injury, resulted in a 3-8 record – the Coogs’ 14th losing season out of the last 20. A Cougar offense which scored an average of 34.5 points per game last year sustained key losses to the offensive line and receiving corps and only managed to score 20.9 points per game this season. There was only minor improvement in the porous defense over last season, and special teams saw a wholesale regression from the previous year. 

Bright spots? If you’re somebody who believes in so-called “moral victories,” then you’re pleased that the Cougars covered the spread against the powerhouse Miami Hurricanes or that they were able to force Southern Mississippi into a thrilling overtime game. But, quite frankly, I find it hard to find many positives about the 2004 Cougar football season. It started badly (with a loss to Rice) and went downhill from there. Thankfully, it is over. 

Some Cougar fans are already looking forward to 2005; there’s hope that, with a good recruiting class, some offseason adjustments, and a more favorable schedule, the 2005 season could be a good one for Houston. But I’m not going to get excited yet; the start of the 2005 season is over 9 months away, and, as this past season clearly showed, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done between now and then. 

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015.)

Tweedle-dum defeats Tweedle-dee

Right before the election I said that Bush would get re-elected because he would hang on to Florida and Ohio and pick up one or more of New Mexico, Iowa and Wisconsin (he won two out of the three). I also predicted that Bush would lose New Hampshire to Kerry, but that it wouldn’t matter. Acknowledge my political prowess!

I’m not particularly enthused about the results of this election, as I’m not looking forward to another four years of the arrogant unilateralism, crony capitalism and pandering to the fundamentalist right that the Bush administration represents, but the voters of this nation have spoken. And I’m glad it’s over. This election was ugly and hateful and neither side should be particularly pleased with the way they conducted themselves.

As for the result, the Democrats really only have themselves to blame. Bush was very vulnerable and probably could have been defeated by a better candidate. But the Democrats chose an uninspiring northeastern liberal (didn’t the Democrats learn anything from Michael Dukakis?) with a murky, contradictory voting record. Kerry couldn’t articulate his plans or visions in a manner that the voter could understand; he couldn’t shake his reputation as a “flip-flopper,” and he did a poor job of defending himself against character attacks from opponents such as the so-called Swift Vote Vets for Truth. He chose to attack Bush where he was strongest by focusing on the war in Iraq and didn’t spend enough time attacking Bush where he was weakest, such as on health care costs or prescription drug benefits. Simply put, Kerry was a lousy candidate who ran a lousy campaign.

Being the “we’re not Bush” party just wasn’t enough for the Democrats. They needed to give the electorate somebody to vote *for* as well, and they didn’t do it with John Kerry.

The Republicans saw the election as a huge victory, because in addition to Bush's successful re-election they were able to increase their margins in the House and the Senate (even adding insult to injury to the Democrats by ousting Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle). However, boasts of a Republican "mandate" are merely rhetoric. 

The nation is still bitterly divided and extremely polarized. 51% of the voting public supports Bush; 49% voted for somebody else. Deep divisions remain along urban /rural and secular/evangelical lines. Although this nasty election is over, the political climate in this nation will unfortunately remain ugly for a long time to come.

(Retroblogged on August 23, 2015. Eight years later, the Republicans would make a similar mistake, choosing an uninspiring northeastern elite with a murky and contradictory record, Mitt Romney, to run against the otherwise-vulnerable Barack Obama.)