Jim Geraghty is breathing easier this week:

Anybody else feel like a ten-ton weight has been lifted from his shoulders? Anybody else feel like every muscle had been tensed and clenched for about two months, and a steadily increasing vice-like pressure had been squeezing him, day by day, as the election approached? Just me? Boy, since that last debate, I just wanted the race to end. Just vote and get it over with.

And we've endured a lot during this campaign. Attack ads that will rip out your heart and scald your eyes. Large groups of hairy, under-employed, bandana-clad reprobates marching around carrying signs equating the president with Hitler. A new political documentary at the "independent" theater up the street every weekend. Every single B-list comedian, aging rocker, and hitless actor (*cough*Affleck*cough*) believing that he was the greatest political thinker since John Locke. I'm sorry, Linda Ronstadt: You're a wonderful singer, but if I ever need your assessment of the Kyoto treaty, I'll call and ask.

The two parties have to change their primary schedule for 2008. This campaign has been going full throttle since last fall, and our nation wasn't built for 16-month campaigns. You end up with a stunning scoop a day that ends up being completely forgotten.

For example, do you even remember that people once wondered about the impact of the Kitty Kelley book? Or Washington's being shook to its foundation by revelations from Paul O'Neill? Remember when Joe Wilson was somebody to take seriously? Or Richard Clarke? Remember when Richard Clarke was thought to be someone who could swing this election?

Would you believe Wes Clark was once considered a serious contender for his party's nomination? Howard Dean? John Edwards's obsession with "regular people"? The presidential campaign of Bob Graham? Really, he was in it. Remember when the Internet was going to power Howard Dean to the nomination? Remember the obsession with John McCain running as an independent? Does any part of the Democratic Convention ring a bell beyond that hammy salute?

Why was everybody on edge from the moment Kerry got the nomination and that first, silly 37-percent-Democrat/24-percent Republican Los Angeles Times poll?

Because this election mattered. I think Al Gore called 2000 the most important election of our lifetimes — and in retrospect, not having him in charge on 9/11 was an oh-so-crucial decision. But this one...with this one, the importance was right smack in front of our faces.

The only thing at stake in this election was the future of Western Civilization. In seemingly every conceivable way, John Kerry was the wrong man to lead this nation in the war we're in right now. His 1971 testimony, his defense-cutting record, his obsession with a "global test," his disturbing pride in the endorsements from unnamed foreign leaders, his naïve belief that the leaders of France and Germany are concerned with American security, his contradictory statements, suggesting he didn't grasp the stakes in Iraq...

... and that damnable Monday Morning Quarterbacking that he dared call a vision! All he ever had to say about the war on terror was that Bush had messed up, and that he would fix it with a plan (details to come at a later date). Serious mainstream media would have demanded those details, and laughed him off the stage when he refused to divulge them.

Bill Maher had it right when he called Kerry a Frankenstein's monster of the worst Democratic candidates in recent memory: the I-know-better-than-you arrogance of Al Gore; the toxic inability to relate to human beings of Michael Dukakis; the dippy never-lost-faith-in-liberalism outlook of Walter Mondale. And, one might add, the decisiveness of Bill Clinton.

(When the networks' anti-Bush propaganda — er, I mean the "exit polls" — broke, I readied myself for a Bush defeat. I thoroughly believed Kerry was the wrong guy for this era, and that his ill-considered policies meant Americans would die over the next four years. But if the Americans wanted to try the Clinton approach again, maybe they would need to witness its failure, again, before they grasped this issue's importance. That's their call, and their right.)

But Frankenstein lost. Our guy won. And it was over by Wednesday morning.