The way to say Nashville, according to authorities, is a long "Nash" and a short "ville." It's a place where people like a good story to go with a song -- and we are about to hear one of the saddest songs of America tonight. One that would make Walt Whitman weep.
The presidential debate, a showdown between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, could not take place in a more fitting setting than Music City. Let me count the reasons why.
First up is Tennessee's Andrew Jackson, a.k.a. Old Hickory, the 7th president who first came to fame as the general who won the Battle of New Orleans. Elected in 1828, the great populist broke up the central banking system, the Bank of the United States, so he is the perfect past president to have on hand in the midst of our own financial crisis.
Dashing as he was, the war hero was considered hotheaded in governing - what a surprise, John McCain. But he expanded the frontiers of political participation in "Jacksonian democracy" just as the election of 2008 is expected to do with waves of newly registered and younger voters.
The Panic of 1837, now looking better all the time, was caused by Jackson clamping down on booming speculation on land in the West.
If you visit the Hermitage, Jackson's mansion in Nashville, the ladies there talk as if "the General" is in the next room taking a nap. He'll wake up when the grandfather clock chimes. A beautiful garden is a living tribute to his wife Rachel, who died shortly before Jackson went to Washington to take office.
The last thing they tell you is that the General owned a large number of slaves -- about 100 -- as a planter. You have to ask and look for where the vanished cabins stood in the middle of the woods, only a lonely few remaining on the estate. The contrast gives new meaning to "Big House."
From the Big House to the White House is a long journey with a trail of tears (on that subject, let me note that Jackson backed driving the dispossessed Cherokee American Indian tribe out of Georgia and into Oklahoma).
While Memphis still sings the blues, Nashville is its country music cousin, with more money in its jeans and swagger in its boots. Clubs are filled with singer/songwriters who make the city a place where people believe in stories and dreams writ large. My sister Meredith and I especially liked Mike Stinson's song, "Last Fool at the Bar," which summed up that state of mind rather well. In general, Nashville represents a sunnier side of the American character, a bigger heart than we have seen in the benighted Bush years. After all, how many cities have a life-size Parthenon because it is, as they say, "the Athens of the South"?
Last, private citizen and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore lives in Nashville with his wife Tipper -- in the prettiest part of town, Belle Mead. For many, he represents the road not taken in 2000, ghost of the history that will never be written. How it would be different, how as president he might have made all the difference -- well, let's just say we wouldn't be waging a war in Iraq and the climate could be cleaner, for starters.
That, my friend, is the long and the short of it.
Jamie Stiehm is a political essayist in Washington.