Wherein Amy admits to Dean campaign envy

Culturally speaking I'd probably be happier in the Dean campaign. Lots of Clark campaigners seem to be military or ex-military, and that's not the milieu in which I feel most comfortable. I remember once my freshman year of college my friend Brian in ROTC had to go to some kind of ROTC formal, and he had to bring a date, cause that's what you did, so he took me with him. There was a long receiving line that we had to go through to meet all the higher-ups and their wives, and the whole thing was this surreal experience....I felt any second like someone there was going to call me out "You! Hippie girl! Give me 20!"

I have much the same feeling in the Clark campaign.

In some ways this is a good thing. We need to get over the culture wars, and one way to do that is to hang out with people with whom we are otherwise not likely to hang out. It's less fun, because bridging those gaps in experience is pretty hard work.

The Dean campaign makes citizenship look easy and fun. I could go to parties with other young people for whom college was a blur of cultural studies classes and really good bud and student actions in support of university service worker strikes. You can get Dean buttons in colors other than red, white, and blue, and spaghetti strap Dean t-shirts (not that anyone would see me in a spaghetti strap t-shirt this time of year anyway...). The Clark campaign offers a "Clark 04 Running Bib". I didn't even know there was something called a running bib. I certainly don't want to wear one. And the t-shirts are of the ordinary type, which don't fit well on women with big breasts. (They just make you look fat and dumpy, not pleasantly busty...) I am not above using the words "Clark for President" stretched across my bust in a tight-fitting baby-doll t-shirt to attract men on the street to take a flyer from me. (Sorry to gross you out, Dad...)

Anyway, I'm sure I'm stereotyping the Dean campaign, just as I'm sure I'm stereotyping the Clark campaign. But I'm trying to explain a certain wistfulness I have. It usually goes by the name nostalgia. It is nostalgia that attracts me to the Dean campaign, a half-dreamt memory of easy community. My nostalgia falls over me in waves of unease -- what if I made the wrong decision? What if I'd really be happier in the Dean campaign? Did I pick the wrong club after all?

But campaigns are not candidates. One does not support a candidate because his merchandise is better or the people look like more fun, or somehow seem more like my kind of people. A campaign is an organization that exists to further a goal, and doesn't have much to do, it seems, with what happens after that goal has been either reached or abandoned. The ability to throw good parties as a campaign does not translate into the ability to lead a country of citizens who are very different from one another. Americans don't need to be able to party together in peace and harmony. We need to be able to work together, respect each other, use our differences to our advantage, come together to meet common goals despite those differences. We need to be able to be citizens together.

And no one ever said that would be easy or fun.