Florida notebook

Miami

It’s a mild and tranquil December here in Florida, the headlines flickering with routine weirdness and depravity. Four years ago at this time, we were roiling in the acid-bath aftermath of a presidential contest that required 36 ridiculous days to resolve, and only then by a brazenly partisan vote of the United States Supreme Court. Our state was the infamous ground zero of that fiasco, and ever since then we Floridians looked forward to 2004 much as one would to an amateur colonoscopy.

On election day I fled far into Everglades National Park to contemplate my options. Like many, I anticipated a sordid replay of the 2000 stalemate. However I emerged to learn that the Sunshine State fell early and without drama to George W. Bush. The deciding controversy, brief as it was, would unfold in a couple of counties in Ohio. Florida was finally off the hook! Whatever lunacy comes out of Washington DC during the next four years, nobody can blame us.