Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday.

“Good morning,” I said.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” he replied.

He’d been out on the first day of the deer hunting season and he hadn’t had any luck. The weather had been nice, but the only thing he came home with was a sun tan. As the Minnesotan with Norwegian ancestry said to the Pillsbury Doughboy, “Nice tan.” I digress. I thought he’d be happy camper/hunter/baseball fan. He was wearing a Chicago Cubs hat, but he couldn’t be happy until the election was over.

The Cubs winning the World Series for the first time since 1908 made many people happy, but the country undoubtedly breathed a collective sigh of relief when the presidential election came to an end. Even dog years are longer during presidential election years. The campaign was entertaining in the same way that we slow down to look at a car accident.

It’s a difference of opinion that makes politics, sports and loose teeth. Candidates should campaign in poetry and govern in prose. When Adlai Stevenson ran for the presidency (he lost in both 1952 and 1956), a supporter called out, “Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!” Stevenson responded, “That’s not enough. I need a majority.”

Leadership roles are sought and needed. The first man was named Adam. He never expressed any political ambitions, but we knew we had them.

There are good things about presidential elections. I get to use the word, “snollygoster.” That means a person, particularly a politician, who is guided by personal advantage rather than by consistent, respectable principles. The first line of a novel I’ll never finish writing was, “Though afraid of clowns, he still voted.” And I read that in the 1930s, it was said that Iowa would go Democrat when hell went Methodist.

A man shared this joke with me, “How do you get a failed politician off your porch? Pay him for the pizza.”

I didn’t like the joke because I like pizza delivery people. It’s a noble calling.

We get more campaigning than we want or deserve. We begin to feel like John Jacob Astor, a multimillionaire, who was supposed to have visited one of the Titanic’s bars shortly after the ship had collided with the iceberg and said, “I wanted ice, but this is ridiculous.”

A friend told me that he is always undecided until right after he’s voted. He’s likely not alone in that feeling.

I’m no crepehanger. I love where I live. I’m glad there are those willing to run for public office. I’m proud to vote.

We all have rules to live by. I never tell anyone who to vote for. I never ask anyone who he or she voted for. That’s like asking someone how much money he makes or asking a farmer how many cows he owns. As I write this, I have no clue who won the election. Having no clue is my specialty. No matter who won, the important thing is that it’s over. The winner is our president, whether we like it or not, and the office deserves respect. We all breathe the same air. On the subject of air, once upon a time, when a man became a father, he bought cigars. Why did he buy cigars? To pass out. Smoking one of those cheap stogies did the trick. People were passing out from the negative vibe of the recent campaign. I’m certain there were many expressions of glee at its conclusion.

I hope you are rested after getting that hour back. We knew that we’d get the hour back, but it’s like loaning $100 to a brother-in-law. You know he’ll pay you back, but you still worry. The discussion at a local cafe was about daylight saving time. A man seated at the table of infinite knowledge summed it up this way, “Leave it to the government to cut a foot off the top of my blanket, sew it onto the bottom of the blanket and then tell me that I have a longer blanket.”

I must admit that I considered the hour that I fell back to be a great treat. There are treasures in ordinary things, but I consider the returned hour a grand thing. Even though I find daylight saving time a senseless exercise, I found it comforting to know that I had that hour. It pleased me to no end. Life was good.

There was only one thing that still bothered me.

It was that for every election there is an equal and opposite re-election.