I left the newsroom early last Tuesday evening, having done my work during the unnervingly quiet hours of the day shift. Most of the reporters and news editors had come in during the afternoon, prepared for the quadrennial slog known as election night.
On Election Day, my job as the editorial page editor has one primary focus: Get finished and get out of the way.
I've spent many years in the newsroom waiting for those votes to come in. It's a place of growing anticipation, of both the work that has to be done within the final few hours of the night and the outcomes all voters are waiting to hear.
The aroma of pizza wafted through the air as the news staff made whatever final preparations they could. Ultimately, they would be at the mercy of the election commissions in each county for the local results, then The Associated Press, election officials from around the county and exit polling for results in the presidential contest.
Not a soul in the office had predicted the outcome of the presidential contest, at least nobody I heard from. Hillary Clinton was going to be our next president, and that prognostication didn't just come from the "liberals" in the building.
I departed, leaving the grind/exhilaration of deadline writing to the news folks. Once home, I tuned in to the election coverage on television, thinking by 9 or 10 p.m., I'd be able to switch to some sit-com or focus on reading my book. Hours later, I was still watching. I had to occasionally remind myself to close my gaping mouth before an insect flew in.
President Donald Trump.
That, friends, is going to take a while to sink in.
My fervent hope is that Hillary Clinton's supporters are wrong. Nobody ever enjoys being wrong, especially when their cause is a better United States of America. And both the big political parties would have us believe that is their cause.
The night Donald Trump became president-elect and even days later, I found it emotionally rending to witness the heartbreak among the people who made up the diverse collection of Americans Clinton had assembled to support her candidacy. As a journalist, the unexpected is always interesting to me. So much of our politics these days are scripted and packaged. But there is a palpable fear -- some of it irrational, some of it within reason -- about Trump's approaching presidency.
And there was a lot of horrible comments from Clinton supporters about how half of Americans support hate. It was an emotional outcome, made more so by the Democrats' absolute certainty that Clinton would mop the floor with Trump's hair. So the disappointment and even some of the hyperbolic reactions could be forgiven.
But now, he's going to be our president.
Many of the people who swore "love trumps hate" delivered heavy doses of the latter as they reacted to the election results. In protests sprinkled around the country, the message "not my president" became prevalent. And none of the protesters recognized what they were doing as the same kind of behavior that was wrong when it targeted a newly elected Barack Obama in 2008. It was wrong then. It is wrong now.
If anyone had reason to be bitter, to be upset, it was Hillary Clinton. And yet she stepped to the lectern Wednesday morning and declared she had congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of the nation. "I hope he will be a successful president for all Americans," she said.
Clinton acknowledged the defeat was painful and would be for a long time. She has her serious doubts about Trump's temperament, his policies, his morality, his capacity to treat people humanely and so much more. And in the midst of a heartbreaking loss for her personally, she still "went high" instead of going low.
"I still believe in American, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."
That is more than Donald Trump would have been able to muster, I'm sure, if roles had been reversed. Clinton seemed heartfelt in urging her supporters to embrace the constitutional transfer of power as a result of an election. It's sad some of her fellow Americans fell far short of her example.
Trump rightly is in store for four years of resistance from people who disagree with him, but "not my president?"
The presidency belongs to all Americans. It's not something to be denied based on which man or woman occupies it.
That's been as true for the last four years as it will be for the next four.
Listen to Hillary Clinton, folks. Believe in America.
Commentary on 11/14/2016