Eve of Reckoning: Tomorrow it finally happens. America goes to the polls to pick its Great Leader for the next four years. I’m predicting (not so confidently) that George W. Bush will be re-elected. Sorry about that, Kerry fans; I myself wish that the tall guy from Massachusetts could have made an underdog comeback like the Boston Red Sox did last month. But at heart, America today is a conservative and fearful nation, a nation that thinks it has too much to lose, a nation that sticks with the tried and true even when the tried and true ain’t so true after all.

One Sunday ago, a British newspaper called The Guardian ran a piece about our election by a fellow named Charlie Brooker. In it, Mr Brooker expressed the following sentiment: “On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod’s law dictates he’ll probably win, thereby disproving the exiofstence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed …”

I myself don’t think that Bush’s reelection will mean the death of God, even though Bush’s brand of religious sentiment makes atheism look awfully good. And I’m not so sure that we’re in for another four years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed either. I do agree that we’ve had too much of all of those things since Mr. Bush took office in 2001. But even though Mr. Bush will probably emerge victorious tomorrow, it won’t be by much. John Kerry’s efforts over the past 12 or 15 months won’t scatter to the winds of history, as with Mondale and Dukakis and McGovern (and Howard Dean, had he run). Kerry did a pretty darn good job of putting a voice to the discontent that a lot of thinking Americans have these days about GWB and his vision for America.

Bush has been running the country as one big adolescent rebellion against his father. Tom Friedman had an on-point article in the Sunday New York Times about George Herbert Walker Bush. Like many people, I wasn’t very impressed by Old Man Bush back in the early 90s. But looking back, it turns out that the Elder Bush made some pretty good decisions, especially his multi-lateral approach to the Kuwait invasion and his raising taxes at a time when taxes needed to be raised. The old guy did the right thing, like most of the great Presidents did, but just didn’t have the knack for making it look good (and so we replaced him with someone who often did the wrong thing, but had the knack to make it look great).

Obviously, Baby Bush couldn’t bring himself to ask our allies for help in Iraq, nor to raise taxes (or avoid an unnecessary tax cut) even if the nation’s well-being truly required that. The little guy grew up in Texas and obviously believes all those Lone Star / Lone Ranger myths. Yea, just what you’d expect for the son of a New England Brahmin family transplanted by the lure of oil $$$.

I’m sure that Mr. Kerry has made GWB sweat a lot over the past few weeks, and that he’ll be sweating for a few more hours tomorrow night. Let’s hope that Mr. Bush takes it all to heart. Let’s hope that he asks himself why America wouldn’t give him a mandate. He can’t say that he got just what befell his daddy; Kerry and Nader don’t have 1/3 the moxie of the Clinton / Perot duo. Nope, he’s gonna have to face himself in the mirror alone and ask, just what does the nation expect of me? Just what can I do to truly make things better, now that I don’t have to worry about re-election? Why did I almost get beat by a guy with pretty much the same philosophies that my father had, and with just about the same charisma level?

Remember this: every vote cast for Kerry tomorrow is a vote for the younger Mister Bush to GROW UP, to realize that his father was mostly right after all. We all have to go thru that sort of thing sooner or later. It’s finally time for GWB to face the moment of truth.

I hope that John Kerry lives to become as much of an institution in the Senate as Ted Kennedy has. He deserves to be remembered with much honor for what he did this year. As with his service in Vietnam, he took up a cause that couldn’t be won, but ultimately helped the nation to face some greater truths. I’m hoping that once the dust finally settles and George W. Bush is re-crowned king, the Big W will realize that it’s time to stop playing cowboy and to truly step into the shoes of the great men who preceded him (and challenged him).