It’s been hard to concentrate. All week. Monday I couldn’t write, so I assuaged some guilt and manned the phones for Obama for six hours. Tuesday I couldn’t write, think or do anything — except vote, then plan for the big evening.

Our dear friends Nick and Tory were coming for dinner plus the big show afterward. Carol was cooking, so I prepared too in my own way. I wrote up a list of the five TV channels I’d be surfing. I went over my state-by-state predictions (Obama 354, McCain 184 — pretty good, Frank!). I set out three bottles of whiskey, just in case.

Now it’s Wednesday, the Big Day + 1, and again, I can’t concentrate. Phone calls. Emails. Visits. Exultations. Condolences with my Republican friends. (Sure I have Republican friends. Every Democrat needs them, or how else will we ever struggle out of the Bushes? My advice to Democrats: Go befriend a Republican or two.)

The emails today have been especially interesting. Because I’m too distracted to compose much of an email myself, I’m sharing two others I received. The first is from my cousin Maura Judkis, a Web producer at U.S. News & World Report and recent George Washington University graduate. The second is from … one of those Republican friends of mine.

In case you didn’t make it out onto the street last night, in case you aren’t 22 any more, in case you don’t have the whole future shimmering before you, well … here’s Maura, to tell you what you missed:

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This is what it’s like to be in D.C. on election night. As I write this, at 4:24 a.m., having just returned home, I can still hear a few car horns blaring. At our neighborhood bar for the first wave of results, and as the fries and pitchers of beer come to our table, we toast nervously to early returns from D.C., Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Illinois. But with each state CNN calls, we grow bolder. “I’m going to cry when he gives his winning speech.” “If he gives his winning speech.” We knock on wood. We clink our glasses. We turn to the TV at the sound of CNN’s dramatic prediction percussion, and yell at it when they show a hologram of will.i.am instead. “CNN is such a tease.”

We care about nothing more than Ohio and Virginia. And they come, with sizeable margins - first one, then the other. At exactly 11 p.m., it’s all over. And that’s when everyone takes to the streets. Bodies stream towards U Street, the most historic black neighborhood in D.C. Someone sets off fireworks about 40 feet away. At the intersection of 14th and U, people young and old dance around a drum circle. Kids climb to the top of traffic lights, trees, anything with a view. Cars, honking at first in frustration, resign to the fact that they aren’t going anywhere, and honk to the beat of “O-BA-MA.” Someone produces a giant American flag out of nowhere, and runs through the crowd with a conga line forming behind. Another guy wears a banana costume. Our president-elect - though at this point, I have not yet thought of him as this - starts his speech, and we can’t get to a TV, because all of the bars are full. Cars park in the middle of the street, open their windows, and turn the radio broadcast of the speech up to full volume for everyone to hear. “Yes we did.” It starts to pour.

We’d left our umbrellas behind in the excitement. Makeup smudges around my eyes, and water drips down my back. A friend and I head down the street to the first bar that has any space to breathe – 3 blocks later, on a street full of bars, we arrive. A drink to dry off. The place start to close. We walk down 16th street to the sound of honking horns. Everyone high-fives everyone. I drop my friend off – she’s tired, and it’s 2:30 a.m., so on my own, I follow the sound of screaming. It leads me back to 16th street, and I enter a parade of hundreds walking down the middle of the street. We join thousands at the White House, screaming and dancing and singing in Lafayette Park. “Na-na-na-na hey-hey-hey, goodbye!” “Pack it up!” “We are the champions!” If I can hear it from my apartment six blocks away, Bush can certainly hear it from within. Did it disrupt his sleep, his peace of mind?

I watch the Secret Service snipers patrol the roof. A stranger inexplicably asks for a picture with me. A hipster on a vintage bike holds up his handmade victory sign, but the marker has started to run in the rain. Colleagues join me, and the mass starts to move. Up 15th, across K, down 13th to Pennsylvania Avenue, and then – yes, we’re walking to the Capitol, drums beating and photographers in everyone’s faces, and drivers still laying on their horns. We meet a British guy who is in D.C. on holiday to the America for the first time. “So we’re going to the White House, then?” “No, this is the Capitol.” “There’s not a bloody bar open this late?” The rain has stopped, and we’ve walked two miles. They climb a statue – the umpteenth thing to have been climbed tonight, and they are starting to run out of chants. The lessening crowd looks behind at the Capitol dome, ahead towards the Washington Monument, and down from the statue, and the phrase on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but that no one has dared to say, is “this is all, at last, ours.”

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And now this, from my Republican friend. She is not merely Republican; she is PASSIONATE — a true member of the “base”. She not only opposed a Democratic victory, the prospect actually seemed to frighten her. Yet read this lovely, gracious message, which I reprint in its entirety:

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To all of you!

I am thinking of you. What a night! There is hope that we will be led by a charismatic, inspirational Commander in Chief. It is wonderful to see so many around the world thrilled at the results, tearful and so very joyful. Joy to the entire world! — Laurie

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If, as I believe, today is the first day of something really really new, then let’s all us … Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, young and old, gay and straight, Christians and Jews and Muslims and Mormons and Rastafarians and hard-shell Baptists too … paste on a big American smile (whether we mean it or not), and see can we take this thing seriously for once in our lives.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

When I relocated from Chicago to Washington DC in 1969, my first job was as a reporter for National Journal, then three weeks away from publishing its first issue. My beat was consumer affairs and communications. The principal agencies I covered were the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Postal Service. At that point in my life, age 29, I had spent approximately four weeks of my entire life in Washington. I had never covered regulatory affairs. I didn’t know nuttin’ about nuttin’.

So I did what a reporter is supposed to do. I went to the FTC and the Postal Service and walked around. I went to various floors of the headquarters buildings, more or less at random, and knocked on doors. The occupants would welcome me in and invite me to sit down for a chat, which typically began, ‘What do you guys do in here?’

For the next 20 years or so, I spent all or much of my time as a working journalist in Washington. I interviewed dozens of regulators, members of Congress and their aides, even White House functionaries now and then. Not once was I denied access. There was no need to keep roaming the halls at random once I started figuring things out, but I only remember one occasion when I had to pass security. That was the time I interviewed Chuck Colson – then a top aide to President Nixon, later convicted and imprisoned in the Watergate scandal – in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

One of the great things about Washington, I would exult to my journalist friends stuck in the provinces, is the incredible openness here. Washington journalism is the easiest form to practice anywhere. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone talks. You can hardly shut them up.

Starting perhaps in the ’80s, things began tightening up in the wake of scary events such as the assassination attempts against Ford and Reagan and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But only after Sept. 11, 2001, did the world turn upside-down.

In the massive wave of fear following 9/11, every government building rushed to install airline-style security. Police cordoned off every street approaching the Capitol; to drive the two blocks up Constitution Avenue to Capitol Hill, you had to pass through an eyeballing and a license check by the cops.

Few questioned the need for such measures at the time. We were a nation gripped in fear.

But then they closed Pennsylvania Avenue to vehicle traffic in front of the White House. Beautiful Lafayette Square across street, scene of many a peaceful sandwich break as well as historic protests and demonstrations, was sealed by jersey barriers. So was the Capitol itself, that temple of representative government, the people’s building in the nation’s capitol if there ever was one. Tourists were confined to the rotunda and a few other official areas – if, that is, they made it past the metal detectors.

It’s understandable that places like the White House would come in for top security. Defense and intelligence agencies too, as well as monuments like the Lincoln Memorial that are high-value targets for terrorists. The Capitol? Understandable too, sad to say. But … the agency I was involved with at the time, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management – the government’s HR office, for God’s sake – was secured as tightly as the Pentagon. Why any terrorist would even think to bomb OPM is anyone’s guess. But good luck to the terrorist who might try.

Voices began to rise in protest at the erosion of these and other manifestations of our American freedoms and birthrights. These voices were largely drowned out by the voices of the fearful, and so the erosion continued – encouraged, aided and abetted by a deeply cynical leadership that saw political advantage in keeping us jittery, submissive and cowed.

But it truly wasn’t until the tide of favor turned against this political crowd that protesters began to feel safe to climb out of the woodwork, and our supposedly free and independent press – which had lost its nerve after 9/11 along with most of the rest of us – started finding its voice again. Nothing to be proud of.

As you contemplate your choice on Tuesday, you probably didn’t consider this topic as being among the issues. You ought to.

Regardless who is elected, don’t expect the airline-style security to disappear – not overnight, maybe not in our lifetimes. And do expect whichever man is elected, Obama or McCain, to continue the fight against terror and terrorists – effectively, I pray. But neither one, it seems to me, is the sort to keep using fear to club us into submission.

On Tuesday, choose the guy YOU think will be most likely to restore civility and lessen this pernicious climate of fear. Choose the Democrat, choose the Republican, choose a third-party candidate — but choose someone. Turn out, and show the world how much we value our democracy and our freedoms. If you needed yet another reason go to the polls on Tuesday, that’s a good one.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. On Sunday, Nov. 15, 3 p.m., I’m reading my story “Our Lady of the Helicopter” at Constellation Books, 303 Main Street, Reisterstown, Maryland 21136 (410-833-5151). The story is included in NEW LINES FROM THE OLD STATE, an anthology of the best writing by members of the Maryland Writers Assn. (It first appeared in “Scribble,” MWA’s literary magazine.) My fellow authors are reading too. I invite you to attend — it’ll be fun — but if you can’t, order your own copy now at www.marylandwriters.org/publications.html

P.P.S. Schedule an appearance at your organization, library or bookstore! Contact me and I’ll pass the word to the appropriate authorities at MWA.