As this is written, people all over the country are still casting their votes. By the time the sun rises again, we all will know who will be our next president and vice president.

The best thing about that, I think, will be the fact that none of us will have to listen to any more campaigning.

We can get back to worrying about the state of our own pocketbooks instead of about the national or world economies.

Instead of worrying about whether or not Sarah Palin fired somebody because she didn’t like him instead of because he needed firing, we can get back to worrying about why Joe Bob’s wife came to church without him last Sunday.

Nor will we need to be distressed about who bought Sarah’s dress.

Instead of worrying about whether or not Barak Obama really is best buds with a domestic terrorist or whether or not he was in church while his preacher was spewing hatred, we can again devote all our attention to deciding which football game we’re going to watch next Sunday afternoon.

Instead of tuning the TV to whatever cable news channel most closely mirrors our own views, we can scan for a rerun of Law and Order or House that we haven’t already seen.

If our own leaning is Democrat, we will no longer have to steer clear of our GOP friends and vice versa. We can once again sit with them at ballgames or at Catherine’s or at John’s Seafood after church and neither we nor they will have to worry about which way the conversation might drift.

It’s time for all the campaign signs to come down and it would be good if the bumper stickers went away, too. At this point, aren’t they just reminders of things divisive?

During the campaign, I had some pretty strong feelings. I think most of us did. It was that kind of campaign.

But now the race is over and it is time for us all to just be Americans, not Democrats or Republicans or Libertarians or whatever.

We remain the greatest nation in the world and even if we did make a mistake this go-round, we can fix it in four years. And in the meantime, thanks to the wisdom of our forefathers, the system will overcome and all eventually will be well.

On the other hand, maybe what we did – and remember that as this is written, I have no idea what we did – was, in fact, the best thing. Maybe by the time we get to the end of these four years, the nearly half of us whose candidate did not win will have decided that things worked out pretty well after all.

Only time will tell.

David Sullens is president of Roanoke-Chowan Publications LLC and publisher of the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald and the Gates County Index.