One Cloud, Many Silver Linings

The Cloud: Four more years of this guy.

We have one nutty system for electing leaders and passing laws, you'd have to agree. After more than a year of the 24/7 media circus, it's over just like that! Everything is exactly the same as before it started, but now we all know how Stephanie Cutter, Obama's Deputy Campaign Rottweiler, got her name--cutting throats, cutting truth from her statements, and cutting her teeth on defending politicians in trouble, like Clinton post-Monica, John Kerry post-Swiftboat, and Ted Kennedy post-his every waking moment. Add to the lies of everyone involved all the money, the hype, the robo-calls, the surveys, the primaries, the commercials, the debates; the weird Herman Cains and John Hunstmans and Newts--and waddya get?  Nada. It was all a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, as my pal Bill Shakespeare famously wrote. To paraphrase, the last year wasted a whole lot of our time, money, emotions and energy yet didn't change a thing, except for gays getting legally married in Maine and Maryland and potheads getting legally high in Washington and Colorado. So to all those stoned newlyweds out there, kudos!

Nothing's different for the rest of us--the little people are still the little people, and those little people who got bigger temporarily by working on the campaigns will now get little again, at the same time swelling the ranks of the unemployed, but from now on, who's counting?

Naturally there are some big changes for the chosen few who are directly involved. The cloud: Obama won. The silver linings: Mitt can get back to his beautiful wife and family, especially those 18 grandchildren. I hope he takes a nice long vacation and gets rid of the bags that showed up under his eyes during the last week. Paul Ryan can once again focus on his sick little girl, who would certainly benefit from some of his undivided attention. Michelle Obama can call off the Realtor she had lined up house-hunting back in Chicago, and The First Granny can breathe a sigh of relief over her four-year reprieve from the old folk's home. Joe Biden is spared from the same glue factory Al Gore lives at, at least until 2016. And I can go back to never watching a presidential speech and never reading a political news story without missing anything, since it's likely to be the last four years all over again.