Regardless of the dreamy rhetoric emerging from the Kerry/Edwards campaign late last night, it now seems all but certain that the GOP has succeeded in securing a historical retention of power in the White House and both branches of Congress.

At the time of this column’s writing, it is apparent that barring serious mayhem in Ohio, President Bush will be at least granted the 269 electoral votes he needs to take his case to the House of Representatives. And it appears that body is guaranteed the Republican majority necessary to usher the commander in chief into a second term.

But it is also evident that much of the populace has grown so increasingly alienated with Mr. Bush that they have entered a strong bid to return him to Texas. The popular vote could yet sway to Mr. Kerry’s advantage as California finishes recording its tallies, and nearly every one of the major “swing states” has proven as harrowingly close a contest as pundits promised.

But everyone involved has known the rules of the game since day one, and there is a reason both candidates spent an inordinate amount of time in rural Wisconsin and not in the population hubs of New York City and Los Angeles: the popular vote doesn’t count as anything more than a historical footnote. So the reality becomes that Mr. Kerry has proven a failure, and his campaign surrogates from the sleazy Terry McAuliffe to the icy Mary Beth Cahill will be remembered as the gang of losers that came up impotent when it really mattered.

Perhaps the greatest chink of the Democratic Party’s campaign was the lack of a candidate. Never was the left base so much behind Mr. Kerry as it was opposed to Mr. Bush, and it is exceedingly difficult to cast a vote for an undefined variable when all the comfort of the status quo is readily available.

Moreover, the Bush campaign succeeded in painting the decision voters needed to make in terms of black and white, the shades the president has been so often criticized for treating policy decisions with. The commander in chief’s handlers had the foresight to see that his greatest weakness is the conviction of absolutism with which he has approached so many issues, and although this notion may be reprehensible to much of America, it is surely preferable to thorough indecision in a time of war.

Indeed, there can be no question about it but that the painting of Mr. Kerry as an instable flip-flopper was at first a brilliant exercise of political marginalization. Then, as the challenger began to suffer in the polls as a result of this critique, it proved a self-fulfilling prophecy as he was forced to commence to alter his positions in a futile attempt to tweak approval ratings.

The reality is that Mr. Kerry never truly stood for anything other than removing Mr. Bush from office. Appearing with Bruce Springsteen was tremendous for making crowds scream, but once the Hollywood accoutrements quieted down and the candidate’s speech concluded, it became increasingly difficult to walk away from a Democratic rally with any genuinely filling substance.

Conversely, a vote for Mr. Bush was a vote for a real policy. This is a country that may be willing to take the “Freedom Fries” off the menu, but is not comfortable making an apologetic overture toward Europe, and is certainly not ready to condition the prowess of a pride-filled military on the endorsement of the French.

This is a nation that appreciates the beginnings of an economic recovery and is thoroughly unwilling to compromise the welfare of small businesses by allowing Mr. Kerry to hike taxes. Moreover, the Massachusetts senator never managed to answer questions about the gap between the high price of his proposed new spending and relatively low revenue stream garnered by his suggested tax increases.

Indeed, the ultimate irony of this election may well be that while Mr. Kerry attempted to run a campaign largely on an “anybody but Bush” platform, he left voters with such little understanding of his liberal ways that people were forced to vote for anybody but him.

Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in rhetoric.