As I watched the presidential debate this past Friday, I felt a tinge of peace inside me while hearing John Kerry and George W. Bush talk. This was probably the first peaceful feeling I’ve had regarding politics since Bush became president. My patient prayers are finally starting to shine through the fog of my contempt for a man that puts me ill-at-ease. I saw two sides of George W on Friday. Half of the time he was that child in all of us that tries to defend himself when he gets in trouble at school or at home. The other half was the oratorically repremanding parent that breeds the oratoral defensiveness in the child who’s been caught stealing the other kid’s crayon.

And somehow Bush’s nitch for grandiose oratory, repetition, deletion, and “shroud of virtue hung to mask his method” has pierced the minds of the non-critically thinking masses of our country to the point where they too are thinking in Golem-like circles. And my prayer ever since his first 9-11 address to the nation, when I first realized that this was our leader, has been for him to show us the child within- the child who needs our help, support, and blessings, but not our patronage. While praying for rain, it was Reverand Maynard who gave the advice to “learn to swim.”