The Chief needs hailing

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

You know … rank has its privileges. I held the deadline on all our columnists; after all, while I can count on getting my own work in while literally working against press deadline, there are too many factors in the world for me to trust that something won’t go wrong for somebody else. Not that anyone asked, but then I do have the reputation as kind of a hardass where deadlines are concerned.

It was simple. I just wrote two columns, this one in which I know the results and a prior one in which I didn’t. (In the column you don’t see, I made a garden metaphor out of the ending of the election season and the ending of the growing season and how the future of this country is like next year’s spring: unknowable. Go figure—a gardening column.)

So here ya go. I’m the only person in the editorial department who knows who won the presidency in time to comment on it for this week’s edition.

And you know what? Few people give a damn what some editor in a 25,000 circ weekly paper in Reno, Nev., thinks about a presidential election. Still, it was very exciting, and I waited for this election with the same fervor as I’ve waited for every election since I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Even though I toyed with staff throughout the campaign that we were going to endorse the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr (especially after that wretched $700 billion bailout that did nothing to help the foreclosure crisis at the bottom of our problems), I’ve got to admit, I started hoping Obama’d run for president after the “Red state, blue state” speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Strangely, I feel a little sorry for Barack Obama today. He’s got four years of hell to look forward to. I hope he can make this a time of healing for this country. Here’s to the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama.