The XX Factor: What women really think.

Bush's Weird Message

It wasn't at the top of my mind, but I did wonder how the incumbent would respond last night—just as I've found myself wondering over the last two months what it could possibly feel like to be a sitting president whose eight years are now almost universally prefaced by the adjective "disastrous." Bush's opponents use it, and so do his supporters, and even if he never reads any newspapers—and seems barricaded out of sight these days—it's hard to believe he has been insulated from the devastating verdict.

Yet to carry on, I suppose he has to be, on some level, deaf to it and to the drama of a succession that is about, front and center, his own failure. Certainly his congratulatory message to Obama last night sounded singularly out of tune—and not just because it was a night on which the candidates themselves so eloquently captured the spirit of historic significance. "What an awesome night for you, your family, and your supporters. You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself.'' From the adolescent "awesome" to the self-actualizing bromides to the flippant "go enjoy yourself" (what phrase did he really have mind?), the well-wishing was unsettlingly off-pitch. So off-pitch that I wonder if we could be hearing the deep bitterness of a man belatedly aware of how derailed his own journey has been.

But-how disorienting is this: We don't have to think about him anymore.