This, I believe

I hope my guy wins today because I think he's better than the other guy, but I don't believe the country will go to hell if he loses. I don't believe one guy is turning the country socialist, or that the other guy will take the country back 50 years. I don’t believe one has declared war on women, or the other on religion. (I'm much more worried, whomever is elected, on that real war with Iran that's looming.)

I don't believe I'm voting for the lesser of two evils. I am voting for the candidate I believe to be the better of two lessers. I don’t like either of them as well as I did a year ago, and I didn’t much care for either of them then, but it is always thus. I trust they’re both more able, more decent, more honest than they appear to be by the end of a brutal campaign, if only because they have to be.

Both are good Americans, good husbands and good fathers, yet each likely has at least one, perhaps several, undiagnosed personality disorders, for what else explains their desire for this job, or belief they can do it? Had they not gone into politics, one shudders at the sociopathic mayhem they might have caused.

Both have said stupid, insensitive, unintentionally hilarious things over the last year and no doubt regret them, but then so have I. However, I am very sorry none of them was photographed wearing a ridiculous hat. Not even Biden.

The one we elected four years ago didn't do everything he said he would, and if we elect the other guy today, he won't do everything he says he will either. Some can take great comfort in that, and others great umbrage.

I know some people way smarter than me will choose to vote for the other guy, and some blithering idiots will vote for my guy, and vice versa, and we all count the same.

I have no use for people who threaten to move to Canada if their guy loses. I mean, go ahead, punks, but have you noticed its winters, football and bacon? No thank you.

Yes, this is a lousy way to choose a president and, yes, I'm sick of the robocalls, the super PACs, the ads, the whole damn thing, but I'm probably sickest of our whining about it all because, c'mon people, [insert obligatory phrase here about this still being the best country in the world with the best democracy, dammit, and throw in a "U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A" chant while you're at it.]

And, yes, I'm sick of the lying, although it's clearly unreasonable to expect the same moral sensibilities from our political candidates as we do from the average preschooler.

Finally, whichever guy wins, I'd prefer a landslide to a razor-thin nailbiter -- especially, God help us, a split between the popular vote and Electoral College vote -- because both parties have go-teams of lawyers, probably already amassed at airports as if they're Navy SEALs, ready to parachute into Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, even Dixville Notch, N.H., to litigate the hell out of this thing.

Finally, if my guy loses, it's only 1,462 days until Election Day 2016.