This New England

Republican reorganization

For McCain to win the election next Tuesday would make Truman's victory over Dewey in '48 look easy. Governor Palin, for her part, already seems to be running to oust Obama in 2012 -- assuming she can get by Mitt Romney, or someone now virtually unknown --- another Wendell Wilkie type perhaps. Or perhaps Michael Bloomberg, smelling a vacuum, will reregister yet again as a Republican -- if he can survive New York's financial-services-industry apocalypse -- and give it a shot.

Still, the Republicans don't have much of a bench these days. Tom Ridge, the former homeland-security secretary and Pennsylvania governor, would do well in a national race, but pro-choice people, like Bloomberg and Ridge, are, at least for the foreseeable future, barred from consideration by GOP convention goers. The latter would rather lose the general election.

And yet even in very Democratic and urban places in New England, such as Cranston and Warwick, R.I., not to mention Gotham, moderate Republicans can sometimes be elected mayor, which would seem a very, well, Democratic Party sort of job. Even this year, party labels aren't everything.

Anyway, how brave of cartoonist Garry Trudeau, speaking for the bien pensants, to have declared Obama the victor in his strip to run the day after the election.

Assuming Obama wins, he'll probably be very popular until next fall, when he'll start getting blamed for the recession. Patience gets ever shorter for politicians, no matter whether they actually have any control over controversial events at issue.

As British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once said when asked by a junior cabinet member what he most feared in running the country: "Events, my dear boy, events.''

The dark season
What a quintessential New England Halloween this year -- still, clammy, the smell of dead leaves, sugared-up hyperactive and only occasionally menacing children and their tormented parents. Now on to the heart of seasonal-affective-disorder season.

Stock up on pajamas
This is is not something that Maine's climate is very adaptable to: Bar Harbor's annual "early bird sale,'' the Saturday before Thanksgiving, encourages people to shop in their pajamas. Indeed, some stores even give them discounts for it. But then, the stores open as early as 6 a.m. that day. The early-bird shopping is followed by a bed race -- let's hope with lots of blankets. This is the sort of thing you have to do off-season in resort towns, especially in recessions.

Public but expensive
Vermont sometimes presents itself as a sort of European-style social democracy But a new report from the College Board says that the Green Mountain State continues to have the highest average cost of attending a four-year public college in America, with a average in-state tuition at $11,341, up 8.1 percent from the year before. The private colleges in the state are not cheap either. Not exactly populist.

Canine conundrum
The owners of Wonderland Greyhound Park, in Revere, Mass., have unfortunately staved off foreclosure by paying more than $752,000 in overdue property taxes and sewer and water bills.

What is surprising is that these places still exist. People want slots, not to watch skinny dogs chase mechanical rabbits. I'm sure that the timing has nothing to do with the fact that next Tuesday the Bay State's voters will consider a ballot question that could ban dog racing in the state...

Wonderland used to have a reputation as a haunt of various distinguished "family'' members.

Could they declare martial law?
A new University of Connecticut poll shows that half the state's likely voters support holding a constitutional convention, which could create major changes in state government. But of course few people know exactly how such a convention actually works, or what sort of people would be there.

 Tags  Bar Harbor Bloomberg Vermont public colleges Wonderland Greyhound. Wendell Wilkie

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