No Bleary Eyes For Me

Last night I was well into a good night’s sleep while America was still counting her ballots and wringing her hands over who would serve as our president for the next four years. As is my routine, I turned in at about 9:30 PM. I knew I had to get up early in the morning and so didn’t even bother reading a chapter or two of the book currently sitting on my headboard.
The truth is that I rarely bother to stay up late watching election returns. I’m far more likely to stay up late watching a World Series game than vote tallies. I’ve seen politicians of all stripes come and go and it really has no tangible affect on my life. The worst that Bill Clinton did to me personally was get on my nerves, because as president, he could get himself on the radio, the evening news, or the front page of the newspaper whenever he wanted. But did he have the slightest influence on the way my life went? No, not a bit.
That’s not to say that I don’t care who wins. Certainly Bill Clinton’s failure to seriously secure America against all threats, foreign and domestic, yielded catastrophic consequences, especially for the victims of September 11th and for those soldiers now serving around the world cleaning up after this negligence. But while he was president, he was less consequential to me personally than my own graying hair.
And in truth, by 9:30, I already had the results. The network I had been watching was switching back and forth between the national headquarters of the two campaigns. There was a clearly festive atmosphere at Bush-Cheney headquarters and a palpable gloom hung over the Kerry-Edwards people. They knew what was happening and that’s one of the few occasions when I’ll take any politician’s word for it.
I usually do sleep well on election night regardless of the results. I went to bed at my usual hour in 2000 believing that Al Gore was likely to greet me in the morning as president elect. I read a little bit before dropping off. That Wednesday morning did brighten my mood.
I know what a great country this is. And although I believe that a second term for president George Bush would be better for the country than a Kerry presidency might have been, I also know that this is a great country and would have survived the worst that Kerry could have done. After all, we survived four years of Jimmy Carter during some of the grimmest years of the cold war. History will ultimately judge Carter as the worst president in history, a title he locked down when he declared that the American Revolution was unnecessary and our disputes with England should have been solved by diplomacy.
Yeah, and we’d all be singing “God Save the Queen” before sporting events. Except, that we’d all be watching soccer, rugby an cricket instead of baseball, basketball and football.
About the only thing left for this election is how much richer America’s trial lawyers will get as the Democrats attempt to win in courts what they lost at the ballot box. And once again, that money won’t be coming out of my pocket.
I do feel for the losers. Theresa Heinz will have to get to work finding another ambition politician who will vault her to her dream of becoming First Lady. Her first two efforts didn’t work out. And if she pursues her goals, then John Kerry will have to set about finding another incredibly wealthy heiress to support the lifestyle that he has grown accustomed to with his first two wives.
John Edwards will have to return to his previous vocation of chasing ambulances. But how bad is that? It’s not as though he’ll be standing disheveled on a street corner holding a sign reading, “Will raise health care costs for food,” or anything. Once a parasite, always a parasite.
Even Tom Daschle will have a job in his wife’s lobbying agency. It’s just that she won’t be quite as successful without her husband putting the old fixaroo in for her in the Senate.
I hope that the real winner is civil politics. The real loser is Michael Mooreism. The withering vitriol of the Democratic Party lost. Let’s pray a lesson is learned.