Dewey Defeats Truman? It’s 1:30 a.m. Eastern time and I’m going to bed to the sound of anchors intoning “too close to call, too close to call” ad nauseum. It’s certainly looking from this jaundiced vantage point as if we can look forward to four more years of these Slate “Bushisms of the Day”. I just heard, however, that it’s only in 25 of the 50 states (and D.C.) that the electors are bound to vote the way their state electorates determined. In an election as close as this — I really don’t know the answer to this — will the losers try to bring some political influence to bear on the electoral votes of the other 25 states?

Thank God, at least, the ad nauseum of the campaign season is over for another four years. And that the end of the Clinton follies is in sight. As Jonathan Freedland reflects in The Guardian,

His fellow Americans will miss him –

more, perhaps, than they realise. They’ll

miss the two terms of peace and record

prosperity, of course, but they might even

miss the psychodrama: an eight-year

rollercoaster ride so turbulent that those

who followed it become queasy at the

recollection. They’ll miss the daily

triumphs and disasters of a character of

Shakespearean complexity, a president

who stirred in the American people

passions of love and hatred unseen since

the days of John F Kennedy and Richard

Nixon – and almost never aroused by a

single man. Above all, they will miss his

signature feature, one which may well

have redefined the presidency itself: an

almost eerie gift for empathy.

I don’t know if I’d exactly call it empathy, which has a particularly complimentary connotation among us mental health professionals. Certainly, he does have an eerie — but somewhat pitiful — skill at using interpersonal insights to his advantage.