How long halt ye between two opinions?

I am terribly fond of our FedEx man, Gene. He's from eastern NC and has that accent - a more country version of Governor Easley's. (Not to go totally off the rails, but the dialect has a lot of dropped end Rs and the O is distinctive, as compared to something of the deeper South - Georgia or Alabama, which you might hear in Southwestern NC. People outside NC would more often imitate the latter accent, I think - it's the one you hear in movies - but the Eastern NC dialect is really hard to imitate. I can't make my mouth do it, but I love to hear it.)

Anyway, I know a lot about Gene, which is sometimes funny: he's divorced, has a daughter named Lauren who's 15 and eats like a bird, his ex-wife's name is Kim, Lauren and her mother have a dog that loves him more than either of them, he drives an Acura TL, and he eats at Bojangle's and Subway almost every day. Also, he gets up at 4:30 am because he hates to be rushed in the morning, and works 12 hours most days.

Once he told me the story of his divorce, which was on account of his wife and mother-in-law (and her no-good husband) not telling him that they had put his daughter in daycare and when he found out and went to pick her up from said daycare, nobody knew who he was because of the secret. And the no-good husband showed up and raised some kind of a stink, and right about there in the story, Gene said to me, shaking his head, "And he died not too long later. He got his due, because God don't like ugly."

So the other day he came in all excited because he had just been to John & Elizabeth Edwards's new country estate, which is about 10ish miles away from here, to make a delivery. He normally has a code to enter the gate but that day there were all kinds of people and cars and Mrs. Edwards' assistant came out to meet him because the bodyguard-types wouldn't let him through the gate.

Gene told me, "I asked her, 'is somebody here? Is it Obama?' and she said, 'I'm not supposed to tell you,' but in that way where she's basically tellin' you. So, yeah, Obama was over there, I guess to get Edwards' endorsement." He shook his head and said, a little quieter and sort of nervous, "You know he's a Muslim?"

I think I said something enlightened like, "Yeah, but not that kind of Muslim, so I don't think it makes much difference." Not that I was necessarily even right, because publicly his religious affiliations are a little ambiguous anyway, and maybe they're also ambiguous in his own heart, which shouldn't be necessarily problematic for a Presidential candidate. I can believe that people think that any past or present Muslim association matters but it felt weird that Gene was telling me that, like, keep it to yourself because you never know who you're talking to. In my experience, though, this is representative of how people with good Southern manners talk about politics and religion - you say your opinion quickly, so as not to invite discussion, and move on to a less controversial topic. Don't so much discuss as state, so we know what we think but we don't need to talk about it.

But the issue of religion is always coming up in elections. I am obviously concerned about my own spiritual life and am deeply connected to one religion, but had I decided to vote for Mitt Romney (had he survived) it would have been based on my generally Republican sympathies on the causes of federalization and finance, not because he is Mormon. Plenty of people wouldn't have voted for him for that reason (plenty of people didn't, probably). Crap like this will always be the problem/blessing of democracy, but elections and their ensuing presidencies always exist in this weird Bermuda Triangle of separation of church and state/"In God We Trust"/judge them on their policies, not their religions/everyone who runs the country should be Christian. It's so complicated. I'm not even totally sure where I land, as far as how this stuff affects my vote, but publicly the noise is one doozy of a double-standard.

All told, it actually kind of surprises me that Obama has lasted as long as he has, given that people in America seem intent on evenutally dismissing candidates for the ways in which they are not exactly like every other politician. It is a logical conclusion that we have Hillary, a totally known (and therefore wholly unappealing) commodity, and McCain, also known, whose momentum seems to be based on war talk. Apparently these two don't have any secret religious feelings that might influence their decisions in office, and look safer and in keeping with political status quo. But Obama's riding great momentum with the "change" campaign, which Democrats and moderates and plenty of Republicans are totally on board with, and he is young, charismatic, and interesting, and a great orator.

But I'm not a Democrat, is the problem, and Obama's whole deal is pretty un-Republican, not that platforms totally dictate what happens in the 4 - 8 years, but he seems proactive and aggressive and like he will at least really try to make things happen quickly. I'm not saying we don't need a change, because we do, but if it comes to Obama and McCain, boy, I just don't know. I know I have many friends who are pained by that, but I have always liked McCain and I think he would be a fine president. Not a great one, but a fine one. At least this time we have viable candidates, versus the depressing outcome of last election's lesser of two crap piles option, but I feel compelled by things, people, speeches, YouTube, his pretty, pretty campaign graphic, to like Obama more. But still, days later, nothing.

Well, not nothing. But not something.