In January, Hatch will not become the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee — which was the main argument for re-election. Nor will he team up with Romney to save the nation. We are left to assume that he will follow through on his other promise to become the best senator the world has ever seen. Of course, we might wonder why he ever had to make a promise like that. Isn’t that what we were expecting all along?

Of course, anybody who knows Hatch will recognize that there’s still some rubber left on his tires. And so we might expect him to maintain the familiar message with a different time frame. I can hear it now: “It’s just two years to the midterm elections. And then I’ll be chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.”

Let’s hope America lasts that long.