How WORLD WIDE WEBERS Came To Be

Around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 2, I sent an email to my daughter Karen, who was in Budapest, helping to set up an educational conference under the auspices of George Soros's Open Society Institute, for which she works. Feeling very excited and optimistic, I wrote:

Dear Karen,

You are probably sleeping now--hope your day went well. The polls are still going to be open throughout the US for at least 1 1/2 more hours, but the early straws in the wind look good for Kerry:

--exit polling data shows Kerry ahead, at least narrowly, in 8 of 10 swing states
--very heavy voter turnout reported around the country, which is good for Kerry
--relatively few claims of voter fraud or intimidation being reported
--the two online "betting" sites for the presidential election have both swung from giving odds for a Bush victory to a Kerry victory

Say a prayer that this trend will continue--and that the Republicans don't find a way to steal the election.

We all know what happened as the evening progressed. The next morning, Karen wrote back to say:

Hi Dad,

Well, your email is very sad, as I went to bed thinking things were going well. Now I've woken up to find that Ohio is leaning towards Bush.

I am very, very sad. I feel that my way of life and my future are being threatened. It's like living in a dystopian novel.

I just wonder what I can do. I definitely cannot sit back and accept this. We really need to rejuvenate our party. Among other things, I think I will start a blog, and I would appreciate your contributions.

Meanwhile, I have to get back to work.

Here is my response:

I'm very sad, too. But your email gives me a sense of hope. Let's work together to rejuvenate our party. I've also been thinking about starting a blog. Let's discuss how we might work together on this.

America has survived times that were worse than this.

WORLD WIDE WEBERS will embody the ongoing conversation at our extended dinner table. It will include reflections not just from me and Karen but from others in our family and, we hope, beyond.

As you can imagine from its origins in an exchange of anguished election-day emails, our conversation deals with politics. But we'll try to put politics in the broadest possible context, including the national debate over "values" that we've heard so much about in the past few weeks. We have our own take on what "values" means, having struggled together, as individuals and as a family, to discover and live our values in the real worlds of work, play, study, creation, and civic involvement. In our lexicon, "values" means something very different from what it means on the lips of some who use the term for partisan advantage--to divide rather than to heal our nation.

If this kind of ongoing conversation sounds interesting to you, you're invited to join in.