Michael Steele is a different kind of party chairman, or so I sometimes suspect. Rather than deal in the kind of triumphalist bravado usual to the breed, he acknowledges when his party is facing an uphill fight.

At least, he did last night, when (according to Wonkette quoting The Hill, which is how I heard about it — don’t think for a moment I’ve taken to watching the shouting heads) he told that Sean Hannity guy on Fox “not this year” when asked about the GOP winning control of the House. I sort of like the way Wonkette put it:

… Michael Steele, for one, does not think the GOP will win control of the House in the 2010 elections. Steele, whose job it is to ensure that the GOP wins control of the House in the 2010 elections, told Fox News thing Sean Hannity “not this year” in response to this exact question….

Steele’s honest approach is very different from the sort of thing you get, for instance, from a Karl Rove, who blathered in the WSJ last week about how “Ambitious Republicans should resolve to run for office next year.”

Rove thinks in terms of the traditional two-party see-saw model, whereby if things aren’t so rosy for the party in power, the party out of power gains by a magnitude equal to the “in” party’s distress. Add to that the convention of the party that holds the White House losing in the first off-year election, and you have a huge slide to the GOP.

But not this time. At this point in history, I think we’re seeing something new. I think the electorate is sufficiently fed up with both parties that the only thing it can think of as bad as THESE guys being in power is THOSE guys being in power. The public is wising up, and has had enough of the tit-for-tat, binary, if-you-don’t-choose-column-A-you-must-choose-column-B worldview that is thrust upon them by the parties, the Beltway interest groups and the MSM, especially 24/7 TV “news.”

I think people want something else. Yes, maybe I’m projecting here as founder of the UnParty, but I really think that, in spite of the fact that the Orwellian powers that be have denied the country the vocabulary necessary to think outside the either-or spectrum, the people are yearning for something else.

They don’t know what it is. They don’t know where to get it, but they want it. Neither of the parties is offering it, by definition. But when individuals within the parties play to it, they win elections. It’s how both Obama and McCain won their respective nominations. Each of them was the antipartisan option within his party. They each rose to the top by running against the Clinton-Bush model of hyperpartisanship. There are others who have broken the mold with some success — pro-life Democrats like Bob Casey in PA, Republicans willing to stand up for comprehensive immigration reform or against torture, like Lindsey Graham. Joe Lieberman (before he went postal on health care reform). Rahm Emanuel managed to win control of the House back in 2006 precisely because he courted Third Way type candidates, much to the chagrin of the True Believers.

At some point, alternatives will emerge in response to this demand. I mean, when you’re frustrated with the likes of Joe Wilson, there has to be something better to turn to than Rob Miller. (It ain’t me because I’m too busy trying to get a job.) There needs to be something better than Brand X when you’re fed up with Brand Y. It hasn’t fully emerged yet, but it will.

Steele senses this — that the days of “if they’re down, we’re up” are over. He may not be able to fully articulate what he’s sensing — after all, he and other party types lack the vocabulary (in fact, he resorts to the standard B.S. that the GOP’s problem is failing to be conservative enough, as “conservative” is popularly defined) — but he knows something is Out There. Maybe, as a black Republican, he is sensitized to alternatives, to trends that don’t run along the predicted tracks. Whatever the reason, he’s onto something…

Today at Rotary we heard College of Charleston economist Frank Hefner tell us that while 2010 might be better, it will be by comparison to 2009. In other words, things won’t suck nearly as badly, but it’s not like we’re going to get back to where when things were good anytime soon.

Which had the ring of truth to me. (For more snippets from Dr. Hefner’s speech, check out Andy Shain’s tweets. He was actually paid to cover it, unlike me.)

Then, this afternoon, I saw this report from my good friend Mike Fitts, which quotes the manager of Columbiana Centre as saying the Christmas shopping season was “crazy good at the end.”

That could be. I know I didn’t do much to contribute to it, but maybe you folks with jobs did. If so, good for you; the economy can use a little consumer exuberance.

But I’m not going to buy any champagne yet.

As you may or may not know, I am not one of your superfans of Gamecock football. Blame it on trauma inflicted over time by the hordes of fans, getting in my way.

The bane of my existence for many years — particularly that year I had Saturday duty back in the late 80s — has been the traffic that blocked me from getting to and from the newspaper building on certain fall weekends. I’m still suffering PTSD from a couple of Saturdays in 1987 when it took me a couple of hours to get to work (all-time worst instance was the time that, after a couple of hours of fuming in traffic, I finally got to within a block of the old newspaper building there on George Rogers, and a trooper threatened to arrest me if I didn’t turn around and drive AWAY from work).

Over the years, I have learned to avoid that traffic, mainly by staying on the other side of the river on game days. But the memory of those horrible Saturdays still rankles. One of the silver linings of losing my job was knowing that I would never have to contend with that madness again…

So imagine my horror when I’m trying to drive home from Memphis Saturday and I find myself  caught in Gamecock traffic in the middle of Birmingham freaking Alabama!

It really snuck up on me. I had used Google Maps on my Blackberry to very cleverly avoid the traffic between Jasper and Birmingham, taking U.S. 78 (the part that is being revamped to become Interstate 22) all the way to the limit of construction, then cut back down Cherry Avenue to rejoin 78 for the last few blocks before getting on I-20. Just before stopping for gas there on 78, I had remarked to my wife, “Is that a real blimp, or one of those helium things that are tethered to a car dealer or something?” It looked awfully high-up to be tethered. But a blimp suggested a football game…

I put it out of my mind until I found myself standing still in the right lane several blocks from the I-20 intersection. I’ve seen traffic slow down at that point before, but there was something eccentric about this. Then I saw four airplanes in a diamond formation coming over the hills from the rough direction of Homewood, and spotted several flashing blue lights up ahead, and became suspicious enough to search for “bowl game Birmingham” on the Blackberry. I am SO not a football fan that I didn’t know whether Birmingham even had a bowl game; I was just inferring from the available evidence. I figured the odds were against it, but still… Immediately, I got a hit on the Papa John’s Bowl with USC vs. U.Conn. And the game was starting in about an hour.

I could not believe it. My poor wife, being stuck in the car with me at my moment of terrible realization…

Anyway, it only took 20 minutes to get onto 20, and after that it was smooth sailing. And I had the knowledge that I had a several-hour jump on the postgame homeward-bound Gamecock traffic.

But it was a nasty shock nonetheless.

Mark Sanford has let down South Carolina in all sorts of ways over the last seven years, but this latest failure was unexpected: He failed to make the cover of a People magazine special edition devoted to scandal.

With all the foolishness that’s gone on in our state this past year — the Sanford follies, from refusing to take the stimulus through the Argentine misadventures; Joe Wilson’s outburst; the infamous “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” quote by some Palmetto State genius at a townhall meeting (which actually topped a Yale list of quotations, so take that, People); Jim “Waterloo” DeMint’s shenanigans — surely South Carolina deserved to have the cover to itself.

Of course, this scandal edition was obviously not confined to 2009, or even to this decade (judging by the O.J. photo), but still…

But we just can’t get any respect, even the perverse kind. At least we got some love from “The Daily Show.”