Always look on the bright side of life.

The guy I voted for lost. Worse, the median voter in the United States appears to be a populist — not exactly encouraging for a libertarian. But you know what? The last time my candidate for president lost (1996), the next four years turned out swimmingly for most people in the country. So in the spirit of optimism, here are the good things to think about in the wake of Bush’s re-election [What about the bad things?–ed. I’m sure those will come up in the comments section. And here.]:

1) We won’t see a replay of 2000 — or a replay of 1876, for that matter. I have no doubt that further voting reforms are needed, but the absence of any large-scale scandal that could have turned the election is a good thing. 2) There may be public hysteria over offshore outsourcing, but the odds of government action against it just went way, way down. And any Senate with Jim DeMint replacing Fritz Hollings is more likely to ratify the Doha round. [What about DeMint’s gay-bashing?–ed. Dammit, I’m trying to stay positive here!] 3) On a related point, Patrick Belton argues in The Hill that the Bush administration’s relations with most foreign governments are pretty good: “thus we are faced with the irony that a president who is not terribly popular with public opinion in most nations in the world is strikingly popular with most of their governments.” 4) Given the bust that was the youth vote, there will no longer be any discussion of Eminem as a potent political force (though I must confess to finding the video hypnotic). 5) Foreigners will definitely not perceive the American electorate as soft on the sustained use of force. Although I thought this was an overblown argument, many people I respect made it. 6) The Republican party may be Jacksonian, but it’s definitively shed its isolationist wing. One thing that haunted me the 24 hours before the election was that if Bush lost, one possible take-home lesson for the Republican Party was that an interventionist foreign policy was political poison. That’s not going to happen. 7) Even if the U.S. government continues to deny funding to stem cell research, the state of California has picked up the torch. Thank you, California taxpayers!! 8) The odds of the Guardian ever attempting to woo American voters again? Zilch. 9) I no longer need to post anything about elections — back to foreign policy, international relations, and Salma Hayek for me!!