Advance Analysis

Dave Barry's election analysis has a handicap.

The Miami Herald made me send in this analysis before the election was actually over, so that it could be printed in a timely manner. This is part of the newspaper industry's crafty plan to defeat this ''Internet'' thing that has the youngsters so excited.

However, he was able to do a bit of prognosticating.

• Barack Obama is our next president, which is very bad because he is a naive untested wealth-spreading terrorist-befriending ultraliberal socialist communist who will suddenly reveal his secret Muslim identity by riding to his inauguration on a camel shouting ''Death to Israel!'' (I mean Obama will be shouting this, not the camel)......

• Or, John McCain is our next president, which is very bad because he is a 287-year-old out-of-touch multiple-house-owning fascist who will rape the environment and build nuclear power plants inside elementary schools and reinstate slavery and create tax loopholes that benefit only people who own three or more personal helicopters......

• Or, Ralph Nader is our next president, which is very bad because it means there has been a successful Klingon invasion.

• Or, the outcome of the election is being disputed because of irregularities such as unregistered horses voting in Ohio, or some Florida county tabulating votes in Roman numerals, or God knows what else, which is very bad because it means the next president will be selected via a giant Lawyer-Palooza court fight that will go on until it's time to hold the Iowa caucuses for the NEXT presidential election.

So basically my analysis is that, whatever happened, we are, as a nation, doomed. We are also bitterly divided, because whoever wins, roughly half of us will despise the other half, and vice versa.

He's also a bit nostalgic for the political discourse of his parents.

........they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country.