elections, transitions, living

In two weeks, we Americans will have an election. Senators, Representatives and Governors--along with State House and Senate offices--will go either to Washington, DC or home. I've followed politics since 1972 when I was the self-appointed campaign manager for Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern in Mrs. Garner's fifth grade classroom. In not the first election I endured, Senator McGovern lost the Presidential vote to Richard Nixon. I loathed President Nixon in those days, less so with the passage of years and after some reading about the ambiguities that composed his life. Senator McGovern is still alive, having just published a book about what to do in Iraq. I won't read it as I have neither the time nor the desire to enter that quagmire, even as a "detached" observer.
As the present election approaches, I have my preferences and will exercise them. Jerry Costello, Rich Whitney (probably), Charlie Howe and Sheila Simon are my candidates for their respective offices and I'll more than likely win one or two of the four I listed. Illinois is not electing a United States Senator this year, but I will gladly support Richard Durbin in his re-election bid in 2008. I am not pleased with our current Govenor, Rod Blagojevich, but will vote for him if his current lead slips under 8 points between now and the election.
A large part of me, however, is burned out from politics, pure and simple. I campaigned for several candidates in my undergraduate years, but since 1984, my attitude toward active political involvement has changed. That's not to say I somehow "left politics behind" or stopped trying to "change the world." I didn't and--obviously--can't get politics out of my system. I simply do not have the fire-breathing, crusading launching, idealistically-oriented sense of drive that I once did. I don't, in other words, do what Lyndon Johnson once said he did: think about politics 18 hours a day. I presume Karl Rove thinks about politics at least 15 hours a day, but I don't know of any quote to verify my hunch.
I'm more interested, as my previous posts may indicate, in theological, historical and literary issues, which I do not understand as wholly separate from either themselves or politics generally. In other words, I'm inclined more to seek than crusade. It matters more that literature, theology and history help people begin or continue or validate their beginning to ask questions about issues in their life that they have not previously been able to ask, never mind attempt to answer. In as much as that becomes a "political" process, then I maintain an interest in politics. Our social system, I think, must allow people the intellectual and existential freedom to ask and seek for themselves. The issue for me, however, rests not upon a Congressional bill or a Presidential signing ceremony played that night ad naseum on "Countdown" or "Hardball with Chris Matthews." I hope through teaching literature and being able to at least articulate a bit of theology and some historical overview to give people a larger sense of those realities that influence how they make their decisions. I won't be voting for Captain Ahab in two weeks,--or Hamlet either--but if their stories can give people the tools by which to decide what type of world they wish to inhabit, then I'll consider my work "successful." I reserve the prerogative, however, to ask what it means to be "successful."