All candidates' names must be to the left of the chads, say the Democrats. The butterfly format is fine, say the Republicans. It may also be racist, ageist, and biased against Holocaust survivors, in Jesse Jackson's jargon. Many Republicans counter contemptuously that only a moron could be befuddled by a butterfly ballot. So does the historical evidence of the original intent of the men who adopted the 14th Amendment after the Civil War, while simultaneously segregating the District of Columbia's schools and consigning women to second-class citizenship.
Wisdom means different things to different people.
But surely it is neither Democratic nor Republican, neither liberal nor conservative, neither postmodernist nor literalist, neither certain that Bush won nor certain that he lost. Wisdom came constantly to the late Meg Greenfield, who gave The Washington Post the nation's best and most fair-minded editorial page. D-Neb., this year. And to qualify my queasiness at W.'s sunny, shallow enthusiasm for executing people with admiration for his sunny, sincere enthusiasm about bipartisanship and racial harmony. Wisdom includes hesitating to reach confident convictions about complex matters.