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This Election Isn't Change, It's More of the Same: Didion

By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff

Posted Oct 17, 2008 3:02 PM CDT

(Newser) – The striking thing about this election season isn’t how different it’s been from years past, “but precisely how similar,” Joan Didion writes for Salon. "Time got wasted in the familiar ways," she laments. The country is in the grip of a startling transformation, but "in the end the old notes had been struck, the old language used."

The parallel, borrowed from MSNBC's Chris Matthews, is 1988. "Now as then, the same intractable questions were avoided and in the end successfully evaded," Didion writes. Whether ignoring the wars in favor of focusing on pigs and lipstick or misstating the details of the economic meltdown, the national candidates missed the point. And voters never balked: “Amnesia was our preferred state.”

In this Oct. 13, 1988 file photo, Michael Dukakis shakes hands with Vice President George Bush, left, prior to their second and final debate at Pauley Pavillion on UCLA campus, in Los Angeles, Calif.
In this Oct. 13, 1988 file photo, Michael Dukakis shakes hands with Vice President George Bush, left, prior to their second and final debate at Pauley Pavillion on UCLA campus, in Los Angeles, Calif.   (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon, file)
Barack Obama and John McCain greet each other at the start of the presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Barack Obama and John McCain greet each other at the start of the presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.   (AP Photo/Gary Hershorn, Pool)
Signs for John McCain and Barack Obama are posted in the snow in Manchester, N.H. Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 during New Hampshire's Presidential Primary Day. .
Signs for John McCain and Barack Obama are posted in the snow in Manchester, N.H. Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008 during New Hampshire's Presidential Primary Day. .   (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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What seemed striking about the long and impassioned run-up to this election was not how different it had been — but precisely how similar it had been.
- Joan Didion

For at least some months it had been clear that we were living in a different America, yet in the end the old notes had been struck. - Joan Didion

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