A half-baked optimist explains why the glass is half-full.

It is one of the eternal questions: Is that glass half-full or half-empty? This question is the one that is said to separate the optimists from the pessimists among us. For me, that question could only have one answer, as I am nothing if not a seriously deluded optimist. That glass, if it holds 8 ounces, and contains 4 ounces of any substance, is always going to be half-full.

Take, for instance, the recent presidential election in which Barack Obama, whose presence on the American scene is so new that his name still causes my spell check to have fits, was elected our 44th President. This man-who said of himself (paraphrased), I was probably the least likely candidate to be elected-has overcome powerful odds, including being saddled with a middle name that few Americans would have ever associated with success in presidential politics in our lifetimes. Of that middle name-Hussein-Obama quipped at the 63rd annual Al Smith dinner in New York, “…I got my middle name from someone who obviously didn’t think I’d ever run for President.”

If my support for this candidate does not show me to be the eternal optimist, then nothing would. Certainly the poor showing by Obama in Kentucky during the May 20th primary should have discouraged all but the staunchest of supporters. In Pike County, when all the votes were counted, Obama showed up with a whopping nine percent of the vote. In my home precinct of Feds Creek, there were eight of us who bravely punched the button by his name. Let us be honest, this doesn’t sound so much like the vote totals of a candidate destined for success. It sounds more like the vote total of one of those whom we have come to know as a “perennial candidate”, such as the Green Party’s Ralph Nader.

But I not only voted for Obama in the spring, I continued to support his candidacy through a series of column during the general election in which I extolled the virtues I saw in him, and even voiced my hope that a majority of Kentuckians would come to see him as I saw him, a promising candidate who could not only become our nation’s leader, but one who could achieve greatness while he was at it. Of course, we all know how that came out. McCain won in Kentucky by 17 percentage points.

Again, the pessimist would call that what it is, a thorough drubbing. Still, I find the optimist in me coming out, as I contemplate the fact that, in the General Election, I had considerably more friends come to the polls at Feds Creek. Those eight voters in May now had a lot more company. The more used of the two machines here registered 98 votes for the President-elect.

Yes, Pike County did something it almost never does, it voted overall for the Republican on the ticket, the first time it has done that since Tricky Dick got his second term. But my inner optimist tells me that those who did pull the lever for the GOP in 1972 must have had serious doubts about that choice before Nixon finally tendered his resignation. And, in the next breath, my inner optimist tells me that while Kentucky did not vote for Obama in 2008, they will be only too glad to vote for him come 2012.

No, I cannot say that Obama’s poor showing in Kentucky has dimmed my spirits any. I am as happy as only one who has backed the winning candidate can be. My belief that the winner would be obvious before my 10:15 P. M. run was proved out on Election Day. When I left for my little three-mile jog that evening, Obama had 207 electoral votes, and what with sure winners in California, which has 55 of them people in the Electoral College, and in Oregon and Washington state, where there are a combined additional 11 electoral votes, I was able to employ my fingers and toes in a fit of ciphering (I learned this art from my cousin Jethro), and I was able to determine that “we had a winner!”

I did not, after the election, cry over Obama’s election, nor did I try to understand why it was that we had elected an African American as President. Rather, I concentrated my effort on trying to figure out how the John McCain of 2000 had become the John McCain of 2008. It was in that election that the Senator from Arizona became known as a maverick who piloted what he called the “straight talk express”. From all the evidence we have, that particular vehicle was disabled during this campaign.

Yes, McCain was constantly trying to convince the American voters that his opponent’s judgments were suspect. Of course, in doing this, he was referring to Obama’s opposition, to both the Iraqi war, and the surge in the number of American forces in early 2007 that seemingly has tamed the violence that overtook that country since our initial invasion in 2003. But McCain had some serious lapses in judgment of his own, none of which he ever acknowledged until Election Night. And the most serious lapse of judgment was his selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, who proved to be a bigger drag on his candidacy than even the unpopular outgoing President. Palin was picked, after all, after only one meeting between her and McCain, and after only one interview, and as one pundit observed, you need three interviews to be hired by McDonald’s, so that move certainly made no sense.

It was his concession speech that saw the reemergence of the 2000 version of McCain. Here was John McCain at his most lucid. He was humble, he was gracious, he was conciliatory. He was everything that he wasn’t during the general election. Rather than the contentious candidate who seemed to thrive on negative politics, this John McCain was a likable fellow who congratulated his opponent, and promised to work with him in the coming years for the benefit of the nation.

And it was here that my inner optimist cringed a bit. What would the results have been on November 4th, if that candidate McCain had been the one Obama had run against? Had this been the case, my inner optimist might now be in hiding, and my inner pessimist might be the one ruling the roost.