Vested Interest - November 2002 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

By the time you read this page, the Election of 2002 will be decided. My messages in the first installment of the President’s Page have been exhortative. I encouraged our members to support candidates that shared our philosophical views. As I sit here during the last week of the campaign, my sentiment is a mixture of anticipation, exhaustion and a healthy ration of disgust. I suspect many of you share these feelings, especially after such a rancorous campaign. But no matter how tired I am of campaign rhetoric and bipartisan mudslinging, no amount of political ennui diminishes the puerile, innocent feeling of wonderment I have when I go to vote. I really cannot explain this experience except to speculate that there are certain memories of our youth that are indelibly marked in our senses.

I was a Detroit Tiger fan from the time that my memory lives. I can still feel and smell Tiger Stadium (Briggs Stadium). I remember walking up the heavy winding ramps soiled with a mixture of old beer, peanuts, dust and time. Everything seemed to be covered with a heavy green paint. The smell and the noise and the sights are still vivid and sensate in my mind.

I have the same sensation every Election Day. It seems like time stands still for one day. I have always voted in the dark – either early in the morning or shortly before the polls close at night. The leaves are always blowing around as I walk into the polling station and the lights illuminate out with a beacon-light quality. The election officers always seem to be these nice, warm, reassuring women with one or two retired men lending support, but obviously not really in charge. Suddenly, I am transported back to the round field house at Close Park in Toledo, Ohio, and I am watching my mom and dad vote for Kennedy or Johnson or Mike Disalle, the former mayor of Toledo turned Governor of Ohio.

I really don’t have a message this month. I am going to enjoy the sights and sounds and smells and feelings of Election Day. Then I will go home and watch the results with excitement and anticipation and trepidation, but also, most of all, with a sense of that small bit of childhood wonderment that has remained unscathed after twenty-five years of professional cynicism and adult travails.

Election days are always special, aren’t they? Next month we will get back to work and perhaps, some new opportunities.

Robert J. Bingle, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association