This is not an enviable position from which to take an informed survey of the landscape.
I don't mean the upper lefthand corner of page 4. I mean this moment, early Tuesday morning, with the week's paper scheduled for an afternoon press run.
This Tuesday - the one I'm looking ahead at and you're looking back at - is/was Election Day 2004. Like almost everyone else in the country at my particular moment, I can only guess who's going to win the Presidency ... or whether, in this 49-49, within-the-margin-of-error, multifariously litigious new nation-state of ours, either guy will have achieved a definitive, nonreversible victory by Wednesday, Nov. 3.
I hope one has. Whichever one. None of us wants 2000 all over again (we'd probably get a metastasized version of it).
But I also don't want 2004 again.
I don't want American citizens so self-righteous in their political persuasion that they think they (but not their counterparts) have a moral right, perhaps even a duty, to destroy the opposition's lawn signs or key the paint job on a car bearing the wrong bumper sticker.
I don't want political campaigns that, not content with trying to win votes, attempt to block them instead - seeking to terrorize legitimate voters out of voting, or to shut them out at the polls.
I don't want to hear again what I heard a talkshow host spitting into the microphone Monday: "If we lose this election tomorrow, we've got to get right to work taking our country back." And what country would that be?
I don't want another political campaign in which ... well, I was going to say in which politicians lie about their opponent instead of answering challenges point-for-point and getting straight answers to their challenges in return. But that would be terribly naïve of me.
So I'll settle for this: an electorate capable of noticing when somebody lies, dodges, distorts or misrepresents - noticing, and caring that it's happening.
Over the weekend I was reminded of something remarkable. In 1963 it looked as if John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater were going to be running against each other in 1964. Although on opposite sides of a great divide politically, the two men proposed to go on a national whistle-stop tour, together, and conduct a running debate showcasing their values, political visions and personal qualities.
We know that it never happened. Maybe it wouldn't have happened even without the intercession of a sniper in a high window in November 1963.
But what kind of America was it in which such an idea could have been conceived? And can we get it back?
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