Ten years ago, I lost someone very important.

She was a public figure so perhaps you mourned her passing with me.  Yes, we knew she was elderly and had fought Alzheimer’s for years, but it was still sad when she left us.

While I may have thought the world of her, she did not even know I existed but if we had met I know what she would have called me.

A perfect dear.

She was the ideal politician.  Fiscally conservative with the taxpayer’s money but so liberally-minded and open-hearted, when her congressional district in San Francisco was in the throes of the AIDS crisis in 1989, she rushed home to conduct a town meeting to have “a no-holds-barred dialogue on the great unpleasantness.”

Yes, Congresswoman Lacey Davenport in the comic strip Doonesbury may have been fictional, but she casted a shadow more real than a lot of people in 3-D land.

She was so scrupulous, she resigned her seat in 1990 over the savings and loan crisis to “set an example” unlike one of the candidates currently running for a certain political office.  This same man rewarded his first wife with admitted “extramarital dalliances” that concluded with the pursuit of and proposal to his second wife before his first divorce was final. 

Lacey would have called that “tacky.”

Being married to my first husband for over 28 years, perhaps I am overly sensitive about the issue.  I have never, personally, dallied.  At this point in my life, with my advanced middle-agedness and two teenage drivers living with me; I am too pooped to even consider a dally.  I’m not even sure I remember what a dally is or what it would look like. 

When Lacey ran for reelection, her political advertisement was “She’s tidy.  A stickler for detail.  She brooks no unpleasantness.  She’s an absolute bear about overruns and tardiness.  Let’s keep her!  Davenport: as indispensable as sensible shoes.”

She was loyal to her Republican party and was “thrilled to pieces” to campaign for her fellow Republican, Clint Eastwood.  While she had never seen any of his films, she was sure he was “just delicious in them.”

She visited the troops during the first Gulf War and after changing into the required chocolate-chip camouflage Desert Battle Dress Uniform, she emerged from her “cozy accommodations” (a tent) with her handbag to go visit the Kurdish refugees who were concerned they would be forgotten.

They were.

The comic strip of Congresswoman Davenport’s death ran on August 15, 1998 and since then, I’m afraid our political processes have been run by “dreary little men.” 

I’ve been thinking of Lacey quite a bit lately with the current election season in a full swing o’ gusto. 

Regardless of the final outcome, we will have a different keister in the Oval Office and many of us will have different Congressional and Senatorial representatives.  Change will happen and the decision the voters must make is this: will it be a little change or a big change?

Some of you reading this do not live in my country and I know that some of those who do think my state of Oregon is a part of Canada. 

I’ve seen your geography scores so don’t get prissy with me. 

I was watching some news reports last night and the correspondents from countries other than the United States were about to pass out from joy that there will be a different leader for our country.  Over 75% of you agree that America is heading in the wrong direction so hold your flame mails.  At this point, I think if the rest of the world would be delighted if we elected as our new Commander in Chief Ronald McDonald.  Or the San Diego Chicken.  Or Ross Perot.

Okay, that last one may have been a stretch.

There are risks with change of any kind.  A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush.

But remember; if you hold onto that bird long enough, eventually there will be a time when your hand requires a thorough scrubbing.

Lacey still appears in Doonesbury although usually as a figment of imagination in the poor head of Jeremy Cavendish or as an exasperated ghost.

No amounts of Bachman’s Warblers will ever bring Congresswoman Lacey Davenport back. 

But I’m sure that after ten years, she has assisted Mrs. God in replacing those dreadful drapes.