D and I went to a victory party for Chad Goerner tonight at Conte's. Since D's birth, I have been much more politically involved than I was before he arrived on the scene, and one of the results has been that I am now the mother of an unusually politically aware 4.75 yr. old. (During the last Presidential campaign, during a long string of Dean for America Meetups, D turned to me and said, with apparently mounting exasperation, "Is How'Dean gonna be dere?")
One of the other revelers tonight asked D wasn't it fun to win for a change, and on the car ride home he asked me why we don't usually win. I explained that part of the reason it feels like we don't win that much is that George Bush has been the President for D's whole life (!), and he has one of the most important jobs in our country, so he has a lot of power.
D: Why does he have so much power?
Me: Well, for one thing, everything he does is news. If you or I say something, we're just talking to each other, but if the President says something, there are a bunch of reporters there all the time, and they make a news story out of it and put it in the newspapers or on the television or radio. Yesterday he was saying that he didn't think girls should marry girls or boys marry boys, and even though lots of other people think that's ridiculous, it made the news. So that's some of his power.
D: And he has his own airplane, right?
Me: That's right.
D: Then he should have flown right home when the hurricane came!* He should not have stayed on his vacation. I wish George Bush was a two year old. I wish George Bush was a baby. Then nobody would listen to him, and nobody would vote for him. Or if he didn't have a name, then how could he tell people how to vote for him, that would be good. Or I wish he was on Pluto. Then he would freeze to death. No, that would kill him, that would be too mean. He's pretty bad, though. He's like, only 1 good, and Mr. Chad is infinity good. Maybe send him to the North Pole, or Antarctica. Which one is further away?
Me: Well, we're in the Northern Hemisphere, so Antarctica is further away.
D: Okay, send him to Antarctica, then. I'm going to marry a boy when I grow up if I want to, because George Bush is just wrong."
* Note: D's class at U-League this year had several late-addition children of displaced professors from New Orleans, so he really "gets" Katrina.
2 comments:
Over the winter my 5-year old daughter's teacher was explaining presidents' day as a day to celebrate the best presidents we've had in our history. Mariel exclaimed, "Well, then we're certainly not celebrating George Bush."
Thing is, though, Mariel keeps asking how he could of won the election because no one she knows voted for him.
OMG, I LOVE Mariel. I can just hear her! In my house, that question (how could he have won?) would just be a springboard into a discussion of the necessity of verified voting. I've got it bad. :-)
Thanks for stopping by, Cynthia!
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