What a Difference a Year Makes.

It's almost the anniversary of your re-election (though many remained convinced that both of your victories are dubious, at best and that is certainly true of the first win. I am less prone to believe the conspiracies about the second because I think you won that through a masterful manipulation of pure fear and bigotry).

Only a year ago, I went to Philadelphia with my 71-year old father to campaign in that mythical Battleground State. The whole election boiled down to the mood of the people in a few land-locked states (and their questionable voting machines). My father, with his barely concealed despair and rage, at what you had done in your four years to the country already. His sheer disbelief that it was even possible that his fellow citizens might conceivably re-elect you. You, who are the opposite of everything my father, the son of immigrants, pitifully poor in his youth, who worked tooth and nail to educate himself, who put himself through school, who joined the foreign service and represented this country for 35 years, and did it all through sheer force of his own will. He could not stomach the thought we might elect you again. You who are the son of wealth, and the beneficiary of cronysism and sophisticated greed. You who never got anything by virtue of your own merit and never seemed to be curious about anything but oil, baseball, and jesus. You, the CEO President. You, Mr. Tough Guy. You, the Paper-Tiger Sheriff brandishing a big stick. You terrified and medicore man. You who should have stayed in Midland, TX, with your pretty wife, and healthy twins, swimming, barbecuing and waiting for the oil revenues to trickle in.

Only a year ago, we stood on a windy street corner in Philly half-heartedly holding beaten up Kerry signs (a man we supported out of total desperation) and got honked at and cheered on and it seemed like the end of this 4-year national nightmare might be near. And my father, joked, that if you won again it might be time to head up north and look at real estate in Montreal. He sounded more like my friends who almost spit with fury saying "I'm fucking moving if he gets re-elected again"then a retiree. Then my father and I parted ways right before election day, I going back to New York and he headed back to his upscale cul-de-sac in Maryland (the spoils of a lifetime of government service). And he told me to "hope for the best" and that "it looked good" but that there would "always be Montreal" in the worst-case scenario.

Only a year ago, I remember getting back to my apartment as the results came trickling in. I chose to spend the night, alone, on the couch, without alchohol which was probably a mistake I realize now, getting phone calls from frantic friends, calling me in panicked disbelief when Florida, legitimately this time, got called for you.

Only a year ago, I was wrestling with the fact that I was living in a country that had just re-elected Darth Vader (Dick Cheney) . I can remember feeling totally defeated picking up the phone to call my dad whose voiced cracked saying that Kerry could still win, Ohio was up in the air and that he had not conceded and I, knowing it was over, cried. My father reiterated that we could always escape to Montreal. I remember I told him the website for Canada had already crashed because of so many hits.

Only a year ago, my inbox was full of emails that kept being circulated, the one that had a map of the United States as two countries: the United States of Canada and Jesus land. There were articles and blog entries detailing vote rigging and the first person accounts of Republicans goons shaking down every black community in Ohio. The anti-red state Southern bias that was spewing out of the my fellow Blue state dwellers; it felt like there was a new Civil war but this time the North was going to lose it.

Only a year ago, you came swaggering out, your face gleaming with new found legitmacy, your administration a weapon of mass gloating, proudly proclaiming that, now, you had "political capital" and you were "going to spend it." Big balls were being planned in your honor and Pat Roberston would be there doing a jig, that radical evangelical swell that had carried you to victory would be sure to cash in on your poltical capital. And then there were the rest of us, nearly traumatized, preparing ourselves to see 50 years worth of progress and protection get ripped up and thrown aside.

A year has passed and look at you now. I bet you think to yourself, after a day of putting out fires, horsely reiterating that you don't want to cut and run as the American death count hits 2000, and your supreme court nominee gets pummelled because even she can't satisfy your reddest, red meat base, and your prized advisor, your architect, your own dear Dirty Trickster looks at an indictment. Are you as shocked as I am at how you've fallen apart? Do you think "I wish I'd stayed in Texas and just raised the twins, gotten another job from one of Dad's friends and stayed the hell out of politics?"

You must think "what a difference a year makes, huh"?