---
title: 'Digging Through the Archive'
date: '2003-10-13T07:33:47-04:00'
permalink: /digging-through-the-archive/
tags:
    - politics
---

As I was doing a bit of [weeding](http://www.otal.umd.edu/~mgk/blog/archives/000183.html "MGK") this weekend, I stumbled across this entry in the [archives](/none_of_the_above/), which made me stop and stare a bit:

> Have just come from completing civic duty, which is increasingly difficult to imagine has any beneficial effect in the world, given the awful [lesser](http://www.graydavis.com/ "Lesser.")-of-two-[evils](http://www.billsimon.com/ "Evil.") \[note: Bill Simon link no longer functional\] choice before us here today. Thank goodness for the phone calls this weekend from [my favorite president](http://www.nbc.com/The_West_Wing/index.html "Fictional.") advising me in the casting of this vote.
> 
> The most important race on the ballot, however, is not this year’s gubernatorial election, but that of 2006, the primary for which is being held today. Proposition 49 — aimed at creating after-school programs for “at-risk” kids (good), but funded in a loaves-and-fishes style, in which no new taxes are raised and no existing programs are cut (puzzling at best) — is the brainchild of [this candidate](http://www.joinarnold.com/ "Lesser, Evil, or Fictional? You Decide."), who everyone openly acknowledges is testing the waters for a gubernatorial run.
> 
> And I thought the Gipper was frightening.

What optimism I felt a mere eleven months ago, assuming that there were *years* between us and the ascendance of the Governator.