Last thoughts on the sea change that we have all just experienced and then I will join some of my other friends who are signing off for a few hours (or millennia) before we have a collective nervous breakdown. Having worked in political elections of all sizes and shapes, from managing small county campaigns, to a mayor’s race, to working at the national Gore campaign, I’d like to think I know a little bit about the people with whom a successful candidate surrounds him or herself and how that plays into the overall tenor of a campaign. When a candidate is so frightened of saying the wrong thing, whose staff micro-manages every. damn. detail. of the candidate’s life, refusing, threatening, and downright bullying others to stage-mother events and appearances, it leaves a vacuum for the simple, likeable, affable, down-home guy (especially one who has nothing to lose) to step right in. I saw it with Bush v. Gore. And I damn well saw (and felt) it with the Brown campaign. I remember Anthony Brown when he was allowed to be himself, when he had nothing to lose, when he was brave and smart and funny and fearless. That is not the man who ran in this campaign. His handlers got to him and the fear they instilled in an otherwise ideal candidate left behind a fragile and stumbling Lt. Governor. The electorate, complacent as ever, never got fired up enough to get up and vote for him and that sits squarely on the candidate’s shoulders.