Vindicated. Finally. I can't actually remember the Mulroney government, or anything about the 1993 election, but for the "What's the difference between the PC Party and a pickup truck" joke, so this is really a new experience. I've been waiting. 1997, 2000, 2004; disappointment after disappointment after huge frigging disappointment. My, but doesn't it feel good to have picked the winner for once, without merely-vicarious interest. The results are currently at 124-103-51-29-1, and while that's not the kind of split I would have liked, it's certainly good enough. It's good enough for at least a year and half or more of relative stability, and a great jumping-off point to try for a majority next time around. I'm satisfied enough, and am heartened to think that it might now be possible to improve from an incumbent position. (And my riding didn't go Liberal, at least. Go to hell, Mahoney.) Finally, on the matter of the Liberal leadership, who'd have ever thought it such a squalid little ending? How did Paul Martin go from the presumptive saviour of Canada, to just the member for LaSalle-Emard? One thing I'll be curious to see at some point in the next five or ten years, and if nobody's written one by then I may just take up the project myself: comparative biography of he and George W. Bush. That would be fascinating - portraits of two men who sought the top job for the sake of avenging Dad's failure, but with very different degrees of success. At least he had the decency - though you'd never have guessed it by this past week's frantic flailing - to concede with some dignity and humility. He's already taken up the invincible mantle of Elder Statesman, though, and we certainly won't have him to kick around for much longer. Now, let's get moving, make zero mistakes, and start working on that record that the CPC is going to be running on circa 2008, what?