Don't Hate, Inaugurate

All right, kids, we made it. To quote Gerald Ford, our long national nightmare is over. Out in Arizona the joy produced by the Cardinals' run has masked the pain of John McCain's crushing defeat. In Pittsburgh, citizens are taking a break from the customary Tuesday-morning incest to monitor our peaceful transfer of power. It's Inauguration Day, so feel free to ignore your shitty job for the next couple hours and tune in to your country.

This will be the last time this blog zooms in on D.C., I promise--unless the Washington Nationals make a Rays-like run to the World Series. If you are politically disengaged I'm sure you're sick and tired of listening to three biased Democrats prattle on about our big victory last November. But for one last day, you're stuck with our crap.

Consider yourself Barackuppied.

When your team wins a championship (listen up Kansas City, this may seem weird), the time lapse between that win and the ultimate celebration are pretty short. You win the Super Bowl on Sunday, you throw a parade on Tuesday. Sure, there are little reminders throughout the year--you might visit the White House, get your rings or raise a banner at your first home game of the following season. But you're the champs from the get-go.

Winning a presidential election is far more deliberate, but immensely more satisfying if you back the right horse. I never back the right horse. I was a Howard Dean guy in 2004, and a Bill Bradley fan in 2000. Bill Clinton ran the first year I was eligible to vote, and I was on board with Bubba, but that election and administration was an exercise in political pragmatism. If you've ever voted, you know you're almost always picking the lesser of two evils.

I suppose plenty of people felt that way last November, that either Obama was slightly less offensive than another creaky Republican, or that McCain was slightly more palatable than the inexperienced whackjob liberal Muslim. I, of course, saw it differently, and I'm of the opinion that we've elected someone who has a legitimate chance to be seen as a great president, the kind of leader that will one day require a monument of his own on the National Mall so packed with Americans right now.

I know the challenges our country faces right now are daunting, and that it's very probable that because of them Obama's presidency will be seen as a failure no matter how qualified or intelligent he may be. That's the lonely price of the office. You're either a legend or a bum, particularly in times of national crisis--wars, recessions, in this case both.

We use a phrase around here, kind of a motto: Don't Hate, Matriculate. Hell, we've even emblazoned it on 100 % cotton T-shirts, which are available for the low, low post-holiday clearance price of $12. It's a play on the malapropistic articulism of old dead Chiefs coach Hank Stram, combined with the spirit of cooperation and tolerance that allows Broncos fans and Chiefs fans to blog together in harmony. You might say it's the sports equivalent of bipartisanship, or deep interracial love.

So join us, America. Even if you voted for McCain (racist). Or you supported Hillary in the primaries (moron). Let's all join hands and celebrate the fact that we won and you lost. And for the next four years you hopeless sandbaggers can kiss our ass.