IS THIS A FUN COUNTRY OR WHAT?

NOTE: THE LAST PARAGRAPH, AS YOU WILL SEE, CONTAINS ONE ERROR OF FACT. THIS COLUMN WAS TURNED IN BY MY DEADLINE, WHICH IS WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. AT THE TIME, WHO KNEW?

Say what you like about the outcome of this election, it sure as heck wasn’t boring. It was at least as nerve-wracking as the ACC basketball tournament, and it’s gone on ten times as long.

So, what conclusions can we draw from the race? A few random thoughts:

• I’ve never been a fan of straight ticket voting. I’ve never voted a straight ticket and I probably never will. But that philosophy does leave one in a bit of a quandary when deciding who to vote for for offices like State Auditor. I’m not even really sure what a State Auditor does. I assume he audits stuff. I have to confess, however, to not being well-informed about the stands of the various candidates on whatever burning issues State Auditors have to confront. I briefly considered flipping a coin, then decided that’s not really good either. I ended up leaving that one blank.
• Hillary Clinton has won New York’s Senate seat. Looks like the Clintons will have to put the divorce off for at least another six years. It just goes to show that, at least in New York, a candidate needs to have more of a message than "I’m not Hillary Clinton."
• Apparently, a pulse is not a mandatory requirement for elected office in Missouri, where they elected the former Governor to the Senate, despite the fact that he was, well, dead. I can’t help but feel for Mel Carnahan’s opponent. It’s bad enough to have to run for office against a dead guy. But to actually LOSE to one…that’s harsh.

• At one point, I was surfing the channels and started watching the election results on the Spanish-language channel Univision.(It was a lot less stressful when you couldn’t tell what anyone was saying.) I observed a couple of things. First, Hispanic news commentators talk really fast. Faster than Yankees, even. But they seem to get some results before the major networks. Univision called the Nevada race a full hour before the other networks, at least according to the graphics.
• I’m not sure what to make of Michigan, which went for Gore despite a vigorous campaign by the NRA and gun-toting rocker Ted Nugent. . Apparently the AFL-CIO is a stronger force in Michigan than the NRA, despite the fact that there’s probably a considerable overlap in membership. Maybe the deal is that union members like to hunt, but they’d rather not have to do it because the auto plant moved to Mexico and they can‘t afford meat.

• Republicans should not try to use rock and roll in campaigns. In the waning days of the campaign, George Dubbya tried to mock Bill Clinton’s use of the rather annoying Fleetwood Mac tune "Don’t Stop" ("Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow…"). At one rally, Bush’s people started the song, then suddenly interrupted it with a screech like a needle being pulled across a phonograph record. They then replaced "Don’t Stop" with the Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again." Hard-de-har-har, Dubbya. Apparently, Bush’s people never actually listened to the tune beyond the title. If they had, they might have chosen to forego having supporters cheering for lines like "We’ll be fighting in the streets/with our children at our feet/and the morals that we worshipped will be gone," not to mention "Meet the new boss/same as the old boss…" You’d think they would have learned from the debacle of a few years ago when Reagan tried to co-opt Bruce Springsteen’s "Born In the USA", only to have people point out that it was about an angry Vietnam veteran who couldn’t get a job. Stick with Wayne Newton.
• Did Bush’s 1976 DUI conviction make a difference? Apparently not. Exit pollsters noted a complete lack of interest in the issue. And the Gore campaign, to its credit decided to leave the issue alone, therefore so will I, except to note that had it been Bill Clinton or Al Gore who had had a 24 year old conviction, ducked questions about it on the campaign trail, and had refused to answer the question on a form when called for jury duty, you would have had every member of the House Republican delegation on the morning talk shows the very next day, braying about "evasive answers" and "lawyerly language." Don’t think so? How many people still refer to Clinton as a "draft dodger" or snicker over the "I didn’t inhale" line? We can only hope that the fact that this wasn’t turned into a big deal signals the end of that sort of nonsense. Frankly, I think everybody ought to get a free pass for anything that happened between the ages of twenty and thirty that doesn’t involve murder.

One thing is for sure: nobody has a mandate here. The Presidency has been decided by a wafer-thin margin. The Republicans have managed to retain control of the House and of the Senate , but again, only by the narrowest of margins. Now that the issue is decided (we hope), both sides need to lay aside the inflammatory rhetoric and get down to business.