Just when you think they're ringing your curtain down.

This has been an interesting couple of weeks. Bush won an astounding reelection and I got promoted. Almost as if the Fates were saying "Hey, we know how you feel. So here's a consolation prize." This happens in life, it seems. We get down about things not going our way and then they do. Thus we are today looking at the two events.

First, take heart Democrats, Liberals, and conservatives who don't like Bush. Though John Kerry lost, we learn a valuable lesson: when you have a message that is working, don't change it. Kerry closed a 15 point gap in two weeks by harping on the war. And when he tied the race, what did he do? He changed his focus away from Iraq. Almost as if the Democrats wanted to lose (and some have made that argument almost convincingly), Kerry shifted away from what was working to talk about what hadn't been.

This election solved a problem for us--we now have something to run against. It occurred to me a few days after the election that we lost largely because of a rather strident adherence to a "Bush stole the 2000 election" mantra. While the candidates didn't address this, they certainly left it to their foot soldiers. And it made our candidate look like a whiny baby. Maybe in 2008 we won't run against the United States Supreme Court and will try to find a candidate that can answer the tough questions while returning us to a progressive, forward-looking, and ultimately hopeful party.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not at all happy with the results. Hell, anything but. Maybe someone could drop me an email and tell me why I've been wandering around singing "A New Argentina" since Kerry's defeat. But it's only four more years and this nation survived a decade of Joseph McCarthy's HUAC and two decades of Tutu Hoover's FBI. We shall prevail.

Now on to the promotion.

I'm an editor now. The editor. Open a magazine and find the masthead--the credits--and look at the name of the publisher. Then look immediately beneath it. That's me. I'm the editor. It comes with a significant pay-bump and a company leash (cell phone). And it comes with tremendous pressure. I don't know anything about outdoor living. I do know about the English language and how to be a good wordwright. So maybe the two will balance and I'll be a good editor. It is terribly exciting but also rather daunting. I've got control over a 40+ page magazine. Fun stuff.

I'll post a link to the web site when it goes live in February.