Let's stipulate, for a moment, that John Kerry is going to win, if not a mandate, a decisive victory on November 2 -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 electoral votes. In this scenario, there will be post-election jostling, no room in which to pull another Florida miracle. Kerry wins, Bush loses, Bush packs up his shit and takes it back to the ranch.

Then what? Where does George Bush go from here? If you think his lack of "gravitas" has been a liability for him as a candidate and a President, just think how it will hamper him as an elder statesman. He's got nothing -- NOTHING -- to offer the country or the world after he leaves office. He could hit the lecture circuit, I suppose, speaking to more audiences of hand-picked well-wishers. But really, that just puts him in a class with former football players and dotcom execs. Can he walk onto the stage at the 2008 Republican National Convention to the kind of ovation that Bill Clinton got back in July? Can he carry even the kind of weight that Richard Nixon was able to find again in his last years? I don't see how he can. Without him on TV every day, American acceptance of this awkward fool will wain, and the GOP will start looking to more personally presentable (if just as ideologically over the rainbow) folks as Bill Frist, George Voinovich, maybe even Elizabeth Dole. Ten years from now, will he have anything on his schedule other than reading The Pet Goat to his grandkids and still being glad that it's finally all over? I doubt it.