Elections matter. The people we elect affect our lives more than ever, because the government has its fingers in more things than ever. I wish that more intrusive government were not the case, but it is and I can’t wish it away.

“Scranton Joe” Biden has left office. President Trump has just started his second term. Here’s a brief review of Biden’s legacy and the challenges that Mr. Trump faces:

I was born and raised in the City of Los Angeles. I went to college and graduate school there and lived there until I was 23, when I moved south to Orange County. The Captivating Mrs. Campbell and I met in LA and were married in LA. My parents, sister and brother all stayed in LA, as did many of my childhood friends, and so I continued going back for decades. I know LA well. I spent lots of time in the Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Malibu, the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood. I was in the state legislature from 2000-2005 working alongside those LA legislators. I am not anti-Los Angeles. Quite the opposite. All my grandparents arrived in LA between 1908 and 1926. That’s a long legacy in a city. I remember well when the Randy Newman song, “I Love LA” came out in 1983. I would drive around the West Side with my convertible top down blaring that song on a beautiful February Santa Ana wind day and thinking there was no place better on earth.

That was then. This is now.

This poem was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Christmas Day, 1863.  Longfellow had lost his wife to a fire, an infant daughter to sickness and his oldest son had suffered a severe wound at the Battle of Mine Run. America was still in the midst of the great national nightmare of the Civil War. The poem was first set to music in 1872. But the more familiar tune to us was written nearly a century later by Johnny Marks (who also wrote Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer) and was first recorded by Bing Crosby in 1956. During the recording Crosby quipped to Marks that he had “found himself a pretty good lyricist.”

If you read my biography on this website somewhere, you will see that I spent just short of five years in the full-time California legislature and just short of 10 years in Congress. Part of the reason many of you read these missives is that I know a bit about how these institutions work and do still know many of the people personally.

In spite of what the formerly mainstream media has said, Mr. Trump is not Hitler or a dictator.

Sir Winston Churchill in 1958 famously stated that “the future is unknowable.” Of course it is. But at some moments, it is more unknowable than others. I believe this is one of those times.

As always, we have the usual uncertainties. There are pockets of instability and war around the globe that could erupt or disrupt. Economies are cyclical and we could go up or down from here. Society and culture are constantly changing and politics and policy move along with them. There can be earthquakes and floods and drought and disease, all of which can rise up and change what we thought was going to happen.

Conservatives are rejoicing over the incoming new Republican triumvirate in Washington. Include the Supreme Court, and all 3 branches of government are in Republican hands for only the third time in my lifetime. Whoopie!

But wait. Donald Trump is a center-right populist. He is not a conservative in a traditional sense. Is this a problem? Should conservatives put the cork back in the half-drunk bottle of champagne?

Let’s take a look.

Many of you were surprised that I did not “spike the football” in my immediate post-election missive. That’s just not me. I won 17 straight elections when I was in office. I did not enjoy campaigns. I endured them in order to be able to affect policy. After each of those 17 victories, I took a deep breath, enjoyed an adult beverage in celebration, was grateful that it was over and that I won, and then started thinking about the job ahead. That is what I did last week. It’s just who I am.

Winning elections is hard. Governing is harder. We will have lots of opportunities to analyze what happened in this week’s election over the next 2 1/2 months until Donald J. Trump is inaugurated as only the second American President to serve 2 non-consecutive terms. (The first being Democrat Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.) With most of this missive, I would like to focus on the difficult challenges ahead for the new American government.

You may have heard that there is an election next week. Well, technically these days, there has been an ongoing election for about a month and it ends next week. Actually the voting ends next week but in dysfunctional places like the state of California “counting” said votes will persist for 30-40 more days.

In this missive, I will tell you where I see the election as standing as of this writing. And then, we will discuss what each candidate for president might do with their newly acquired power. This power shift is not being discussed much on the campaign trail.

Three separate topics today. So, let’s get right into them.

Energy: Energy is essential for almost all human activity. From basic needs like cooking food or moving from place to place or keeping warm at night to all the things in a modern lifestyle like computers, you need energy to do any of it.

The Machine: Nobody is going to vote for Kamala Harris. Well, OK, a few people are. But most who will pull the lever for her are either voting against Donald Trump or they are voting for the Democratic Machine.

The Eve of Destruction: The 1965 song that opens this missive was a huge hit in the US and UK, hitting #1 in the US. The Vietnam war was heating up. We were all being taught drills in the event of a nuclear attack.

I try hard to understand what the future holds. I expect we all do. We have more information now than ever at our fingertips. We can research almost anything with a few clicks on a keyboard and find out things that 50 years ago would take researchers days to find in a library. Maybe it’s the easy access to reams of information that makes it more difficult to see what lies ahead, when we used to just rely on gut feel. Or, maybe we are in a particular era of uncertainty that obscures our vision of the path ahead. Let’s take a look at our 5 dimensions of chaos and try to assess what might come next. As you will see, there are mixed messages on all of them.

I confess I did not watch the debate on Tuesday evening. I am an Elder here at our church in Scottsdale, and we had a previously scheduled session meeting that night. I’m sorry Donald and Kamala. But God comes first.

So, I will not comment on the debate itself, but instead on the reactions to it and perhaps where things might go from here:

Trump Campaign: It was a bad night for the Trump team. All but the most ardent always-Trumpers agree that Trump took the bait on too many issues that Harris wanted to talk about while failing to make her defend her record at all. The “moderators” were totally on board with Team Kamala, which even all lefties except the most fervent ones agree. Even taking that into account, Donald did not make his points effectively.

In 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger was reelected governor of California by 17 points. A decisive victory. I actually played his Democratic opponent, Phil Angelides in debate prep with the governor for two days that year. 17 points is a substantial margin of victory. No Republican has won statewide office in California since.

How did this happen?

Answer: After Democrats win, they change the rules so they can never lose again.

As Labor Day weekend approaches, I’ll give much of the election a rest for a week. The 60 day dash to the finish will begin after that, and it will likely be a very newsy dash. So, let’s look at a couple of other things.

A.I.: In the Terminator 2 Movie, Judgment Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character states that the “Skynet” computer system became “self-aware” at “2:14 AM Eastern time on August 29th, 1997.” Everything changed at that moment, at least in the movie. You would think that something similar happened in the last year as computers became “intelligent” and they now “think,” which they didn’t do a few months earlier.

No, I am not going to write about the DNC convention this week. If Kamala says something of interest you will hear from me about it next week. Instead, let’s review where the campaigns look like they are right now, and what might change.