Photo: Watson/AFP/Getty

The choice of Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's Secretary of State is one of those mighty wind-generating news items that will keep pundits busy for days or even weeks; like a lot of campaign reporters, however, I'm suffering from Hillary fatigue after last year and find myself with absolutely no opinion at all about that head-scratching nomination.

The Barack-watching business has begun to take steps in a nervous direction for other reasons, however. Obviously the big question about Obama, after his election, was just exactly how much "change" he was going to bring about — would he bring in people who actually can do the job to work in his government, or would he hire the same old whores to man the ship? I know several reporters who are either officially or unofficially on "Whore Factor" duty, watching the rapidly kaleidoscoping transition picture and keeping track of the number of known whores and ghouls who for some reason have been invited to befoul the atmosphere of the next administration.

Obviously there has been some dire news on that front already. When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate.

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In Al Franken's race in Minnesota, blue and red tangle for the final time in the Bush era.

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• The Last Recount

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John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time.

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• Requiem for a Maverick

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Photo: Raedle/Getty

So the other day I'm getting off a plane in Minneapolis — thanks to Al Franken and Norm Coleman, the long-awaited post-election chillout period never materialized — and I see Sarah Palin's face onscreen on a CNN broadcast in the Limbergh terminal. As side note: It's been a tremendous relief to me personally to see that Sarah Palin has consistently stayed in the public eye since her walloping defeat at the hands of Barack Obama last week. It may be that no American politician will ever again match the comic genius of George Bush, but I have high hopes for the Palin era. True, Bush was a once-in-a-century phenomenon: when he got tongue-twisted and said something stupid, it was also inevitably revealing in a very moving, very profound way. He was a like a cross between Yogi Berra and Confucius, with a dash of Vlad the Impaler thrown in. No matter how dumb future Republican Party nominee Sarah Palin turns out to be — and she's just awesomely dumb — she'll never be able to come up with stuff like "Just because you happen to be not rich, doesn't mean you're willing to kill," or "Make no mistake… I talk to families who die." The truly unique thing about Bush was that his mistakes and malapropisms spanned such an awesome comic range.

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Photo: Tama/Getty
Friday afternoon in the city: I basically needed two days after the election to get caught up rest-wise; when I finally woke up, I found out that Chuck Schumer was already starting to talk about bringing the Fairness Doctrine back. Somehow you knew after Obama won that some of the dumber Democrats would be unable to help themselves and would show up on TV the next day in full marking-their-territory mode, pissing on every Washington tree. In any case, let's hope that blows over — in the meantime, a public appeal:

I'm going to be following Andrew Cuomo's investigation into the Lehman Brothers/Credit Default Swap mess. Since there are undoubtedly some readers out there who work on Wall Street or in the finance world, I wanted to ask anyone who either worked for Lehman or in a relevant field to get in touch with me, strictly for background. What I'd really like is to meet up with someone who can walk me through the day-to-day routine surrounding the trades of those kinds of derivatives, or really with anyone whose job touches the finance world in a way that's relevant to the crash.

This can be a strictly off the record/background type of deal, just for my own edification. Anyway, if you can help, please contact me at this address: editors@rollingstone.com.

More coming next week, gotta run.

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Photo: Sullivan/Getty

So it's over. Won't have much to say here, since I just got done writing a piece for the magazine following a long day and night of travel and my brain is therefore in full melted cheese mode right now.

On my flight from Atlanta to Phoenix yesterday evening I sat next to a McCain supporter from Georgia, a retired military guy gone into sales. We were both watching the returns come in on Delta's in-flight TV service. When news flashed that the polls had closed in Florida, he turned to me.

"I bet those people in Miami-Dade‚ will be supporting Obama big-time," he said, apropos of nothing.

In Phoenix a few hours later, at a very somber McCain "Victory party," another retired Air Force officer railed against the new regime. Obama, the man said, will "demoralize the armed forces" to the point where "we won't even exist anymore."

I asked him if he really thought Barack Obama would intentionally destroy the military and ruin the country just because deep down inside, he hates America that much. The guy shrugged.

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Illustration:Barry Blitt

It was hot, it was dirty, and it took a very long time to be over — but it's finally time to light that cigarette after the 2008 presidential race. In the end, this strange and bitterly fought campaign season was really about two things: the unbelievable, almost inexpressible incompetence of the Republican Party, and the commensurate rise, on the other side, of the remarkable figure Barack Obama.

So now, from Mitt Romney as a Kmart shopper to Hillary Clinton as a horse, a few favorite moments from the trail.

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Photo: FReeper dinasour/MichelleMalkin.com

In connection with the whole whining theme, something has to be said about Republican third-stringer Michelle Malkin’s column yesterday. As noted, we should all brace ourselves for an unprecedented period of whining about liberal media bias; it's starting already, with hacks like Malkin already cranking out what essentially are early election post-mortems, blaming the already-conceded McCain loss on the campaign press.

Malkin listed five major crimes of liberal bias committed by the “Obamedia.” One is the absurd story about a “suppressed” videotape purportedly showing Barack Obama attending a “Jew-bash” party with Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

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Photo: Getty

Off today to Pennsylvania to catch a joint McCain-Palin appearance. That should be fun. McCain's latest tactic is to cast himself as the last electoral bulwark America might ever have the chance to employ against the inevitable socialist takeover. I can't wait to see the applause he gets from all those Pennsylvanian anticommunists.

The reason I even joke about this is — well, let me just make this one small point before I hop in my car. If, as expected, Barack Obama wins, we should all get ready for the emergence (one might say re-emergence) of a powerful new storyline in the right-wing media. There are going to be many stories circulated about the rise of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other in-the-tank-for-BO media types. Complaining about media bias was already a national sport before this election season, but now that one of America's top TV commentators is an affable lesbian who rolls her eyes every time she reads a Republican talking point, you can expect the howls from the hills to be louder than ever.

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Illustration:Victor Juhasz

The strategy of the Era of Rove has worked for a long time — but now, suddenly, things are different. Not only does the torch-bearing evangelical Colorado of Ted Haggard and James Dobson appear poised to turn its nine electoral votes blue for a nonwhite presidential candidate, but the congressional seat belonging to one of America's most celebrated gay-bashers in this once-impregnable Republican stronghold is also up for grabs. Has there been a sea change in the electorate? Is there a place on the American map where you can actually see the country outgrowing the politics of bigotry?

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