Dialling for dollars

With a week to go before the election, our phone has been ringing off the hook with soft-money-seeking groups of all descriptions prospecting for a bit of the ready. For some reason--an erratic/perverse kind of ESP?--I've been picking up on all the left-wing callers.

Here's a little background:

My wife and I have a mixed marriage. She's a more or less traditional-liberal sort, a registered Democrat, while I'm a conservative (and registered Republican) with a strong libertarian streak.

This occasionally makes for interesting and intense political pillow-talk, but we're grownups about it, and we generally get along like a house afire.

Early on in our relationship we agreed to a mutual non-aggression pact on political and charitable donations: funds held jointly will not be used to back any candidate or organization that we don't both agree on.

As a practical matter, that means that our donations tend to go to civil rights groups, arts and environmental charities, groups that try to help the homeless and hungry in NYC, and so forth.

Neither Bush nor Kerry (nor, for that mattter, our financially well-endowed alma maters) got a dime out of us this year.

By now, we're old hands at blowing off callers pleading for money for one cause or another. "Our charitable giving is fully committed for the year; please take us off your list."

Tonight, though, I picked up the phone on the third ring and found myself in conversation with a smooth-talking representative of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a group I've supported in the past and in whose program I generally believe. They were raising money for a special poll-watching and vote-counting effort, and after quickly checking with Carrie I caved and forked over a modest donation.

I harbor no illusions about the political bent of most of the Legal Defense Fund folks. A friend of ours is on their board of directors, and while he's a wonderful guy you just about couldn't find someone I differ with more on most political issues.

But I back them because, on the cases and issues they choose, they're usually on the side of the angels: trying to ensure social, economic and political particiption rights for all.