Look on the Bright Side, Harold Ford: You Never Have to Go to Buffalo Again

It sounded, this morning, like former imaginary Senate candidate Harold Ford really wished he was actually running for office. But that will pass, and soon he'll be grateful. Because now his life can go back to the way it was.

• Harold can go back to taking a limo to MSNBC every morning. He no longer even has to pretend that he's ever seen the inside of a subway station.
• He doesn't have to worry about the optics of jetting off to Bermuda this week to address a conference of tax avoiders.
• On that note, he doesn't have to worry about paying taxes in New York anymore! (Though he did promise that he'd file here for 2009.)
• He also doesn't have to worry about John Cook asking him about his taxes anymore.
• And he can go back to Merrill Lynch, and back to the Mandarin Oriental's 35th-floor cocktail bar and the Waverly Inn and the St. Reigs and the Regency.
• Gay people will stop heckling him while he attempts to pander.
• He won't have to submit to vaguely humiliating interviews with anyone anymore.
• ALL THE HELICOPTER RIDES HE WANTS.

And he's done with the bullshit involved in running for office in a state as huge and unwieldy as New York!

• No having to remember dumb details of New York geography like "how far your office or home is from the courthouse."
• No more trips upstate, ever again.
• No more terrible photo-op lunches with horrid lifelong pols is grimy outer-borough greasy spoons.
• No more policy questions, ever again. Just the warm, loving embrace of Joe and Mika.

Now, Harold will go back to being an exceedingly comfortable nonentity. Until he decides he wants to be the Governor of California.

(Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)