Life lessons ?

As usual I spent a good part of the morning online, reading the Sunday editions of the Dallas, Houston and Austin papers with particular attention given to the Opinion sections of each and the letters to the respective editors.

What goes around comes around. It's a cliche, but its truth is established in the letters written by Texans who are apparently becoming peevish these days about their new president and his agenda.

The same qualities that made G.W. Bush adorable to Republicans drove Democrats crazy. His very election was the kind of fluke the nation only experiences once per century, but those of us who grumbled that W wasn't a legitimate president were told to "get over it." After 9/11, we were warned that if we didn't get behind W and his agenda, we were supporting the terrorists. The media regurgitated White House press releases as if they were actually news, and served as flag-waving cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq. While all this shit was going on, people like me despised W a little more each passing day. When he won the 2004 election, we threw up our hands and wondered how 51 percent of the voters could be deluded enough to give him another four years to ruin everything we loved about America. Making matters worse, the Republicans held majorities in the House and Senate and were willing to rubber-stamp virtually every half-assed idea W came up with. Congressional Dems were essentially told, "Sit down and shut up... we'll send for you if we need you."

The same qualities that make Barack Obama adorable to Democrats are driving Republicans crazy -- all the perceived horrors that Democrats experienced from 01/2001 until this week are now facing Republicans and they aren't taking it well. Their complaints are remarkably similar; only the names have changed:

Obama's election was a fluke, helped along by an unexpected economic downturn. The media are cheerleading instead of reporting. Obama's agenda, enacted by Democratic majorities in Congress, will destroy the country.

It's a safe bet the same Republicans bitching about Obama today will hate him as much or more on his final day in office, and as soon as anything goes wrong will be all over the place pointing and yelling "I told you so." I know because I've been there, done that.

The life lesson in all this is that the next election is never more than four years away, so don't get too smug and arrogant because circumstances will flip sooner than you expect.