A mad man president?

November 5, 1980

We have a new president.

And a stillness hovers over our campus like a fog, fear stirred up in the overnight that few can completely explain in any reasonable terms.

All the professors except for the few token Republicans warned us of great danger if Ronald Reagan became president, and now Reagan has, and we stroll the campus walkways waiting for the earthquake to come.

Pauly, of course, always the troublemaker liked the idea from the start, if just for the change.

Some more radical characters on campus wanted it, too, but for different reasons, hoping to get back to their radical pasts when they still had relevance and students were less lethargic.

These radicals envision a new campaign similar to the one they waged when Nixon was president, breaking out their own anti-establishment signs and their long-winded speeches they have not been able to use since Nixon resigned.

Only everything feels different now. We're all older, and public attitudes have shifted, fewer young people to fuel the revolution, more of us with much more to lose if we do.

Professors warn us of the potential for war, claiming this will be Reagan's solution for everything, including population control when young men (no women yet) start coming back in body bags.

I don't believe half of what they say, but I'm ten years older than most of the kids here, and they embrace what the professors say, when I'm still skeptical.

I didn't vote for Reagan; I voted for Carter, even though I know Carter is a wimp, and has done as much to build up the military with new tanks, neutron bombs and cruise missiles as ever Reagan could.

I guess maybe some of the spouting professors' fears seeped into me about how Reagan might really be a madman, a new Hitler, who will try to conquer the world.

People in Germany elected Hitler once, too, and plunged us into a world changing war from which we still haven't fully recovered. He killed in the name of God and country, and from what the professors claim, Reagan might do the same.

Will he?

My girlfriend and I sat before the TV last night, listening to Walter give us his commentary, by which time there was little doubt that Reagan would win.

They called it a landslide, a political coup, and if you believe our professors, the world will suffer not just our country.

My girlfriend, who is ten years younger than I am and more susceptible to professors' rhetoric, doesn't didn't didn't smile, going off instead to study her French.

Our politics differ in degree, but not so radically that the result failed to scare me a little, too.

I have already seen the instability of the world, and the viciousness of the left and the right, recalling how the resignation of Nixon six years ago wasn't enough for many of my blood thirsty friends who wanted him crucified rather than merely humiliated.

Our world rattles with instability.

I've learned that politics is not about building anything stable, but about making sure the other party doesn't build anything our party didn't like.

So I keep thinking about the old pier in Atlantic City and the music pier in Ocean City, which people claim they want to rebuild, but never do, and so year by year, both slowly decay – the air full of unfulfilled promises, but very successful political sabotage that leaves us all with less.

None the less, there is change in the air, for both me and the government, one that will turn us both in some new direction.

Last night, the GOP started its comeback after being humiliated under Nixon and Ford, bringing changes that promise to sweep across the country like a strong wind, knocking down unstable structures.

The big question is what they will build in their place.

While the wind here subsides and leaves most of us dazed, we embrace sunlight after the terrible storm of the election, though we still hear the rumble of distant thunder even as the misery of rain has passed.

I recall Carter's face when he conceded, a man on the verge of tears, and how grave he looked before that when exit polls told him his reelection did not look promising.

It was a dirty election as all elections are, filled with misinformation each campaign tries to sneak into the press and so to give lies validity of news when they are still lies – Carter and the Democrats desperate to cling to power they've had for only a short four years, while the GOP was hungry to regain it – Carter looking spent now when he had gleamed so brightly in 76 when he beat Ford.

Back then, I was even more confused than I am now, angry at my boss and how even Democratic capitalists are mean-spirited when someone steps between them and their wealth. I was lonely, then, too, with no girlfriend to comfort me or share my bed, and bitter at a world that seemed incapable of living up to its promises.

We have a new president today, who won by a landslide, and I only hope the professors are wrong, and he does not blow down more than he builds up, and that the other party that hates him so much, doesn't destroy any hope for our future.