Election day 2012

Last Sunday, I watched the best "60 minutes" show in years. David McCullough was interviewed. McCullough, a popular writer of history, was asked his impressions of the presidential race.

"Was it the worst horrible mud-slinging race of all elections?" McCullough replied, "No. The worst was the race between Jefferson and Adams where they accused each other of incest and being a hermaphrodite." McCullough continued to explain that Romney and Obama had spent $2 billion on words, a writers perspective to be sure, and none of the purchased words were very good. He proffered that the best president was George Washington because he had no precedents to follow and the most plain spoken, but effective, was Harry Truman. McCullough suggested Truman's moniker "Give'm hell Harry" was often mischaracterized. Truman actually said that he told the people the truth and they thought it was hell.

I could have used Harry Truman's genuine honesty numerous times as I watched the earlier  debates. In the town hall debate, a young unemployed man asked what could Romney or Obama do to help him get a job? They both replied with their standard political stump speech. Romney said he was going to create 12 million jobs and Obama said the economic recovery, under his administration, was on the road to a full recovery.  Truman would have replied, "Young man, leave this meeting now. It is a waste of your time. No president can help you find a job. Get out and knock on doors. Talk to your neighbors. Visit every business in your community. Go back to school. Learn a new skill. And take the first job offer you get."

By tomorrow morning, the election will be over. Divisive speeches filled with words of accusatory epithets hurled like blood-seeking lances from the dark minds of high-paid writers will be replaced with vanilla words rafting on the gentle waves of reconciliation. Both parties will claim victory, but only one person will be president. The world will not end, gasoline prices will continue to rise, health insurance will increase every year, and the equity market will not slide off a cliff. Obama care will survive. And people will get back to focusing on work. The real losers are the pollsters and the TV personality pundits who have lost their consulting contracts for another few years.

It all ends just in time so we can all focus on the second half of the NFL season, the last several games of college football and finally the December beginning of college basketball.

The real important things will be back.