The races for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey - exactly 12 months after the closest Presidential election in history - ended in unsurprising victories for the two Democrats.
No rational observer is suggesting these results reflect, in any way, on the popularity of President Bush or on the way the country views his leadership.
In fact, the CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released yesterday showed the public's approval for the job that the President is doing continues to hover at an astronomical 87%.
So, why these results last night?
First, as anyone who has sat through a campaign seminar has had drummed into their heads: Good Campaigns Matter!
Both the Earley campaign in Virginia and the Schundler campaign in New Jersey had institutional problems which, to a great degree, were not their fault. Nevertheless they both spent months trailing their Democratic opponents and just as the voters in each state would normally have begun to pay attention to the messages designed to close, then overcome the gap - September 11th happened and everyone had to go off the air for several weeks.
Would they have been able to reverse the trends if not for the terrorist attacks? Maybe and maybe not, but we will never know.
Secondly, it has been documented to the point of tedium how closely the two parties are matched: The Presidency was, for all intents and purposes a dead heat; one seat separates the parties in the Senate, nine in the House; and control of State Legislatures is about evenly split.
Governors have been the only major political unit which have remained out-of-balance: When voting opened in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday morning, Republicans controlled 29 Governor's mansions to only 21 for the Democrats.
As of this morning that will change to 27-23. Next fall if the Dems pick up a net two or three more, then the Governors will have proven to be a lagging indicator of the political equilibrium (a) in which the country has been trapped, or (b) which has permitted the country to experience its new sense of shared purpose, depending upon your viewpoint.
I choose (b).
If either the GOP or the Dems held a huge majority in one or both Houses of Congress (such as the 292-143 margin by which the Democrats controlled the House after the Ford-Carter election of 1976) then it would be nearly impossible for the notion of bi-partisanship to have gained even the smallest toehold in the American psyche.
The majority, in 1977 - which could have lost SEVENTY FOUR Democrats and still have won every vote -- would not have been able to help itself from ramming things down the throats of the minority.
The minority - with nothing at stake because of its tiny numbers - would not have been able to keep from throwing itself on the funeral pyre of shared purpose.
As has been noted here before, one of the great ironies of the Jeffords defection in the Senate is that it put Tom Daschle in the Majority Leader's slot which allowed the country to believe in the notion of bi-partisan government.
So, the election results of last night will be disappointing to the Republicans in both Virginia and New Jersey. But, as King Canute demonstrated, any opponent can be defeated save one: The tide of history.
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