Decision Day

To the many Americans on my friends list,

May you have a successful, quick election with no recounts or lawsuits (or at least, as few as possible.) May the person who is best for the job be the one who actually gets it.

I think most of you know who I believe that to be, but the fact is, I don't have a vote in this election. You do. Please use it.

American Politics in the Canadian classroom

My kids today took a poll of the entire class. It was a sheet of paper with a line down the middle (drawn with a ruler!) and "Kerry" on the left side and "Bush" on the right. (I think the left-right thing was an accident on their part.) The tally was:

Bush: 4 votes, including both the Kurdish kids, but not the Iraqi girl.
Kerry: 23 votes, including myself and the entire rest of the class.

I got to explain the concept of the Rule of Law, and how Bush doesn't respect it well. I also expressed the opinion that while I disagreed with them, if I were in the position of the Kurdish kids, I might very well feel the same way. The idea that people have different opinions that must be respected and upheld, never jeered at, was, I think, new to them.

So thank you, America, for teaching my kids more about politics in one day than I've managed to drill into them in two months of studying the Canadian electoral system. (I know they know who Paul Martin is, but I doubt more than half of them could tell me what party he leads. . .)