Nashville, Tennessee is something of an anomaly in the South. The home of a thriving music industry, it is far more liberal than the state in which it lives. New hotels are rising up the way Starbucks and McDonalds sprout in most cities--which is to say, almost on every block.
When New York chefs look to open a new restaurant in a different locale, they have been choosing Nashville lately. The demographics, the sophistication of taste and the money are there.
And now, Nashville has just elected a woman mayor, for the first time. Megan Barry beat her opponent, whose name happened to be Fox, and that turned out to be providential, because he conducted his campaign as Fox News would have. He launched a whispering campaign that Ms. Barry is an atheist, so she had to resort to appearing at prayer breakfasts in church. Ms. Barry, apparently, was fighting against charges she is not Christian enough, which in a Bible belt state, even in a liberal enclave, is a slur.
She will build on what her predecessor, Karl Dean, did to make Nashville an emerging national hub. And, Mayor Dean is not from Nashville, or even Tennessee. The man grew up in Massachusetts. Imagine that. The good citizens of Nashville chose first a Yankee and then a woman to lead them.
Politics is a strange estuary.
Sometimes the voters get it right.
If this is possible in Nashville, maybe voters could get it right when they think about who should be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
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