The Great Debate

Last night's presidential debate at Ole Miss was a missed opportunity. When we could have heard serious conversation about what the real opportunity costs of a $700 billion bailout are likely to be, we came away unconvinced that either candidate truly understood the bailout package, other alternatives and the causes of our banking meltdown. When we could have had serious engagement about our insane tax code, we got lowest common denominator tit-for-tat and campaign sloganeering. When we could and should have heard the candidates had , the word "Iraq" was not mentioned until 40 minutes into the debate.

Untouched were areas where America desperately needs true leadership and difficult decisions: retooling our economy to address climate change, ensuring the long-term solvency of Social Security and Medicare, fixing an inhumane health-care "system" that is crippling American businesses.

Obama should have landed several haymakers on the old gent. Perhaps it looks more presidential if he stays away from the more vicious attacks and addresses the voters in a measured way.

McCain meanwhile comes across neither as a total warmonger or a dotard. My dominant impression was of his egomania. Everything was about him and about tooting his own horn. "They called me the sheriff" because he opposed earmarks. "I'm the Senate's original maverick!" he crows about the nickname his campaign seems to have contrived for him, sounding like he's hawking New Coke. Obama, on the other hand, comes across as much humbler, in fact invisible sometimes, using the royal "we" that must be natural for all candidates, who appear alone before the voters but in reality are in conference constantly with advisers, managers and spouses.

McCain's closing statement was impressive: brief, straight-ahead and powerful. It had a strange opening, though: "When I got out of prison..." My wife and I looked at each other. Prison? Was he in a Johnny Cash song or something? Of course he meant the Vietnamese POW camp, but still, I had never heard him refer to it that way.

Avon, Phillips, Madrid

The road north of Farmington to Rangeley, Maine is a favorite drive of mine. In August, the wife and I bundled up the baby, shelved our Blackberries (mine is a really cool silver color called Lunar Glow), and jumped off the hectic 24/7 whirlygig of modern life here in Hollywood to go camping in Rangeley for a weekend. (Full disclosure: I am lying. My sister and brother and their families camped; we stayed at the Rangeley Inn and joined them for 'smores.)

North of Farmington on Route 4 one follows the Sandy River, a wide stream full of boulders that weaves back and forth under the road. The forest is lush here in the summer, everything is overgrown, and one focuses on the deep green of the trees. There is not a lot going on here any longer. Rangeley is a hopping town, a "four season tourist town" with spectacular fall foliage, a ski resort and camping and watersports in the summer. (What do they do in the spring? Mud sightseeing? Mud snowmobiling? No idea. )

But driving out of Farmington, through Avon, Phillips and Madrid, this time, I was struck by the number of empty houses. The area is very slowly losing its population. There is little forest products industry anymore, once the dominant source of jobs in northern Maine. In Phillips a large logyard and sawmill sits at a fork in the road. Now the yard is empty and the mill is quiet. That's new from the last time I was there.

A few years ago the town of Madrid was "de-organized," a term of art describing the dissolution of an incorporated Maine town. The townspeople vote to dissolve their town and throw their municipal functions back onto a state agency with the acronym LURC, which is pronounced, ominously, "lurk." It's a little sad driving through this crossroads now. The sign is still there on Route 4 though: "Welcome to Madrid, 1807." (Madrid is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable here.)

(A description of Madrid from 1886 is here, including a mention of Smalls Falls, one of the reasons this drive is one of my favorites. The town then had 437 residents.)

There's nothing but trees here now; why in God's name would anyone have moved to this inaccessible wilderness in 1807? What did they think would be here in 200 years? Would they be disappointed, or were they headed up here to escape the law or a landlord or the colonial equivalent of the Blackberry?

Today there is basically only one way to get to Avon, Phillips and Madrid, and that is to drive for three hours from Portland (or fly in to the airfield in Phillips, I guess). 200 years ago the only way was over rutted and rocky wagon trails, by horse or by foot. Starting in the 1870s, a series of small railroads sprang up to serve these towns. (The founding of so many tiny railroad systems in Maine seems pretty mind-boggling, considering that, in my lifetime, it took decades for consumers and government to restore passenger rail service from Boston to Portland.)

Tall hills on either side of the Sandy River dictated that roads and railbeds follow the river valley, and the paved roads today trace those early routes. It's easier to get to, but not much easier, and there's not a lot more there.

Sometimes civilization doesn't follow a straight line. People go to one place, and it grows. People go to another, and that one doesn't grow, and they move on. The houses fall in on themselves. Eventually even the cellarholes disappear. 173 people live in Madrid now.