Campaign fun is over, now real works begins

Campaign fun is over, now the real work begins

Date published: 11/7/2008

YOU CANNOT possibly imagine how badly I hated to see the 2008 presidential campaign end.

Never before in the history of American politics has there been assembled a cast of characters so ripe for satire. It has been a columnist's dream.

There was President George W. Bush, the stooge who, grinning all the way, has fumbled his way through the English language for two full terms.

Then there's Vice President Dick Cheney, the archvillain, a man who has been compared with Darth Vader and even reportedly dressed as the "Star Wars" character at a costume party.

Let's face it, how often are we going to find a vice president who shoots a lawyer in the face during a hunting trip?

We had presidential candidate John McCain, who looks older than his 96-year-old mother, and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who looked like a movie star and shot like Annie Oakley.

We can't forget about Hillary and Bill Clinton and how easy they were to poke fun at.

And, of course, there was Joe Biden, who thought Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president during the 1929 stock market crash and that television was the popular means of communication during that era.

We got to talk about hockey moms and Joe the Plumber during the past three months. And name me another country where lipstick on pigs has been introduced into a presidential campaign.

With only Biden left to satirize, it is going to be a tough go for columnists in the coming months. Barack Obama is far too mainstream to be any fun.

On a more serious note, here are a few observations following Tuesday's election.

The stock market didn't go down 1,000 points the day after Obama's victory, but the Dow Jones average did drop about 930 points in two days, the worst two-day plunge since 1987.

Republicans control the wealth in this country and Republicans are clearly worried and about where we are headed with a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.

But then Republicans always seem to panic when a Democrat is elected president.

Europeans, however, are overjoyed with our selection of Obama as president. Early Wednesday morning a reader in England wrote me the following note:

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Date published: 11/7/2008