Let’s put the whole mess behind us

Go ahead, Mr. or Ms. America, scrape that bumper sticker off the car. Pull up those lawn signs and toss them in the garbage. Throw out your Bush-Cheney or Kerry-Edwards buttons and the silly boater you were wearing when you stayed up late on Election Night, swilling too much chablis and shrieking at Wolf Blitzer and pulling for the red or blue candidate of your choice.

Yes, the long national nightmare is over. We officially have a president.

But the truth is, for most voters, the whole loud, ugly, rancorous campaign didn’t end a moment too soon.

Officially, it went on for four months, but it felt like 40 months. It felt like some kind of endless steel-cage match in some dreary traveling carnival, with jeering crowds guzzling cheap beer and screaming for one of the fat wrestlers to smash a folding chair over the head of the other.

No, there’s not too much about Election 2004 that we’ll miss.

Certainly, we won’t miss being constantly reminded about the bitter polarization of this country.

No longer will we have to watch ourselves at cocktail parties, lest we slip and start talking politics and get into a heated argument with the nice couple next to us, who turn out not to share our political ideology and try to spear us with a carrot stick.

We won’t miss the King of Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, going all self-righteous on us, as he did in his appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” when he lectured hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on their responsibility to the national discourse.

Jon, Jon, Jon – what got into you, babe? What’s with the Mother Oprah act? Stop being our national scold and go back to being the smug fake newscaster on “The Daily Show” that we all love.

What else?

OK, we won’t miss John Kerry’s little salutes.

In fact, let’s make it a law from now on: No saluting unless you’re wearing a military uniform. Or even better: No saluting if you’re a politician, period.

Neither will we miss George Bush’s smirks. And what was making him laugh so much during the third and final presidential debate? Were they showing an Adam Sandler movie on the VCR off-stage? Was there a mime juggling on a unicycle back there?

One thing’s for sure: We won’t miss being told over and over again that this was the most important election of our lives, and that nothing would be the same if evil Candidate X were to win.

Look, that’s the beauty of our presidential elections: No matter who wins, our day-to-day lives go on largely as before.

The government isn’t toppled. Tanks don’t roll through the streets. Doors aren’t broken down in the middle of the night, and the winner’s political opponents aren’t whisked off to frozen gulags in North Dakota.

You wake up the morning after the election and go to work and come home and check the kids’ homework and watch a ballgame, pretty much the way you always do.

Oh, yes, here’s another thing we won’t miss: hearing about how important the youth vote was, and how young adults would turn out in droves.

Because guess what?

Young adults didn’t turn out in droves.

Despite all the noise about the “Rock the Vote” campaign and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ “Citizen Change” initiative, the nation’s youth voted in about the same numbers as they did in 2000.

Maybe instead of those “Vote or Die” T-shirts the kids wore, the rest of us should wear T-shirts that say: “You Didn’t Vote, So Shut Up!”

The point is, few of us will look back on this election fondly. So let us vow, right here and now, to put the whole ugly mess behind us.

Let the healing begin, as John Kerry urged in his concession speech.

Therefore, let us speak no more of undecided voters, of exit polls, of flip-flopping, of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and Swift Boat Veterans for Whatever.

(In fact, let there be no more Vietnam War redux, period. Please. Let that ugly little war rest in peace.)

From this day forward, let us vow never to utter the words swing states, battleground states, toss-up states.

Let’s leave the polluted Blogosphere to the bloggers and their 500-word conspiracy essays on the mysterious bulge under George Bush’s suit in the first presidential debate.

And let us all agree on this: If a wealthy, patrician-looking politician wants to dress up in full camo and tote a shotgun during goose-hunting season for a photo op that he hopes paints him as a regular Joe Six-pack, that’s his business.

If the president of the United States wants to climb out of a fighter jet and walk around an aircraft carrier deck in a flight suit like something out of “Top Gun,” well, that’s his business, too.

The beauty of it is: We don’t have to pay attention anymore.