It’s over! It’s over! Thank God Almighty, it’s finally over! And what is truly remarkable is that without my saying what is finally over, each and every one of you knows exactly what I am talking about. Quite frankly, I thought this election might never end — that it might go on for the rest of my life, and only death itself would separate me from this endless ordeal.
It seems like years ago when Trump was attacking the face of Carly Fiorina or accusing Ted Cruz’s father of being involved in the assassination of John Kennedy. And I can barely remember now when Hillary proclaimed she was feeling fine before collapsing shortly thereafter with pneumonia.
Why we need almost two years to do what other civilized countries manage to do in a couple of months is beyond my comprehension. When the Prime Minister of England lost the Brexit vote, he declared he would step down within a few months. He was out in a matter of weeks.
Not here. The primaries alone take up a good chunk of one’s life. And the bad news is, it’s not going to change any time soon, if ever. All the news outlets love elections. They sell oodles of advertising because of political campaigns, and elections provide food for the starved daily beast, which now operates 24/7.
By the time our candidates finally reach the finish line, they are so utterly exhausted and weak they can barely get out of bed, let alone govern the most powerful nation on the planet.
What is the press and, for that matter, what are we going to talk about now that the election is in the history books? We can no longer fixate on which woman Trump groped where, nor can we dwell on what emails Clinton deleted when. Once again, families will gather in silence around the kitchen table with absolutely nothing to talk about.
The new president will be given a honeymoon period of perhaps a few days (with all the divisiveness in the country, there may be no honeymoon at all) to wage war on ISIS, to solve the problems of climate change, immigration, health care, etc., and then, with little changed, the next cycle will commence all over again. Pundits will start talking about the Congressional elections coming up in 2018, and we will all be right back where we started.
Note to reader: This column was submitted before the election results were known. If, due to some tragic circumstance, the election is too close to call, and we once again return to the days of the Bush v. Gore election in 2000, please disregard this entire column while I look for some cyanide pills to end my misery.