For those of us who are election junkies, it's been a tough week.
See, we're in limbo here in our Nation's capitol. While not everything hinges on who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it's a big issue for many of us whose lives revolve around the Federal government.
Take my fulltime employer, for example. From 9 to 5, I work for the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit police issues think tank that gets approximately half (if not more) of its funding from government agencies like the National Institute of Justice and the COPS Office. It's been a good eight years for us, because Bill Clinton's administration supported Federal funding of policing research. We have built good relationships with Al Gore and his people, but should George W. Bush end up coming north to take office, we might not be in as good shape. Republican administrations tend to support giving Federal money to the states as block grants. We won't go out of business, but we will have to adjust to that reality.
For people who are political appointees from the Clinton administration, it might be time to polish up the resumes...but then again, it might not be. If Gore is found to be the winner, he will likely replace Clinton's appointees with his own people. However, it's much better to be an outgoing Democratic appointee if the incoming president is of the same party. It means you have a better shot at getting another position elsewhere or retaining the one you have.
So what's going to happen? I suspect we won't know anything for sure for another week to ten days. It might even be longer than that. But in the meantime, please don't blame those of us who live in and around D.C. for seeming a little distracted. We're just trying to figure out who our next leader is going to be.
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