Election Excitement

On Saturday night we were at a birthday dinner celebrating the 60th birthday of two friends. Before we went into dinner, which was lots of fun, we had the chance to speak with a woman who is very excited about the election. She commented that for the first time in a long time there should be reason for hope. The country has a lot of long term problems many of which have been created and perpetuated by the political system. She worried that for too long the country's leaders came from the same elite part of society and were burdened, regardless of party, with the same tired "solutions." But she thought that this election offered exceptional promise to change all that.

Was she supporting Guiliani or Clinton or Obama or Romney? No she is a French national, married to a friend who is an attorney in San Francisco and she was talking about recently elected French president,Nicolas Szarkozy. Our friend discussed with great knowledge the tired ideas that came out of all of Szarkozy's predecessors all of whom, back to almost to DeGaulle, came from the Ecole nationale d'administration.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have that kind of excitement about the upcoming election?