Avi Steinberg wrote an interesting and humorous article for Slate, “Confessions of an RNC Security Guard” (here) which details his experience being a security guard during the Republican National Convention. His observation of the late night Republicans is wry and witty and I want to share the last few lines:

All the hotels in the area are dark. Thousands of Republicans stir in their beds, dreaming thousands of dreams about Sarah Palin. But Charles Hunter, an environmentalist delegate from New Hampshire and a veteran of Republican conventions going back to the 1980 coronation of Ronald Reagan at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena, can’t sleep at all.

“This is my last convention,” he tells me, lighting a cigarette.

“Why?”

“I’m a real McCain guy. I served. But I liked the old McCain — when he was a true hero, before he signed on with the yahoos. I actually believe in ‘country first.’”

“Not a fan of Palin?”

“If I were McCain I’d probably bring her onto my ticket, too. That’s exactly the problem. I guess I tricked myself into thinking that McCain, even after he watered himself down for the election, could somehow restore sanity. The Democrats tried to paint him as a twin of Bush. Not true. But Palin … she does remind me of Bush. McCain has made a devil’s pact and sealed this party’s fate.”

Even though he’s old, he smokes his cigarette like a young man, with earnest haste, before he flicks it off into the dark.

“That’s it,” he said, “we’re through. Even if we win, we’ve lost.”

That sums up politics for me. Even if we win, we’ve lost.

No matter how much power, influence, or control we’ve gained, it has done us nothing. Innocent people die under oppressive regimes, children are killed in wars, disease and disaster we can’t protect against.

The truth is I want to put my hope in someone like Obama, or McCain, or Bush, or Clinton. I want to believe they can change my life, our lives, the world. That they can make America into a country people love and respect instead of hate, that they can make American into a country of peace and not war, that they can bring justice to the oppressed, not only in the states, but also in the world. And then I realize, that’s already been done, there’s already been an election and it happened three days after the cross and I have to put my hope in that.

That which does not exist he calls into being. He says, Go!

Even if we lose, we’ve won.