ARLINGTON — On a cold, rain-soaked Veterans Day, President Barack Obama walked slowly through the white, stone markers at the section of Arlington National Cemetery reserved for troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two wars he oversees as commander in chief.

Late Saturday night, the House approved a health-care bill by a narrow margin of 220-215. The bill’s passage is considered a political win for President Barack Obama. The bill’s passage is also a win for America’s working- and middle-class individuals and families.

Election payoffs can be startlingly swift, especially in the case of Tom Perriello. A year ago, the current Fifth District U.S. House representative laboriously rolled to the curb the inaptly named Virgil Goode, an incumbent whose habitation of a seat in the Capitol was mostly spectral. Mostly but not entirely. Goode’s absence was haunting Saturday.

Democrat Creigh Deeds wrongly focused on social issues and lost to Republican Robert F. McDonnell in the race for governor in part because young, African-American and other voters who supported Barack Obama a year ago stayed home, a political expert said.

Meteorologists, correct on occasion, say conditions will be favorable today for voters to venture from their homes and select mostly from guys with perfect hair as representatives to serve for the next four years. Here in the central Shenandoah Valley, it will be partly cloudy with highs near 60. For President Barack Obama looking on from the capital, it might be decidedly chillier. If it’s fall, leaves and the electorate’s mood must be changing.

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Another campaign, mercifully, is edging toward fruition only to give way to another, a process less like the changing of the seasons, which are a delight, and more like modern multimedia, which are edging toward delirium, like a maze of slot machines in some cheap Vegas casino, all flashing lights and buttons but no winners. One campaign ends and another begins, the lines fade to nonexistence, so the ends and beginnings are lost and forgotten, and power passes from one party to the next and back again, and the people who still play do so in the role of suckers, pulling levers in vain hope of hitting a jackpot on a machine rigged never to pay a dime.

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Every once in awhile I disagree with some who usually think as I do. Last Friday, I found myself disagreeing with President Barack Obama and with words spoken years ago by newly confirmed and seated U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Fourth-graders are not progressing in their capacity to perform rudimentary arithmetic, mirroring a malady that long has afflicted Democrats. The results for schoolkids came in Wednesday from federally funded achievement tests, and for Democrats a day earlier with the passage of a Senate Finance Committee health care bill to the sound of triumphant cries among the vacuous left.

Things to ponder:

n If you believe President Barack Obama could fulfill all of his campaign promises, you are delusional. Only Jesus Christ could have done that and only with the help of all 12 disciples.

Prospects for a Republican sweep in the state’s marquee races brighten almost by the minute as Democrats struggle against drags at the top of the state and national parties. R. Creigh Deeds and President Barack Obama look like a dating service mismatch, each racing for the door as though fleeing an unwanted goodnight kiss.

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Thanks, Mr. Wilson, and boos to Mr. West and Ms. Williams. In the words of comic strip character Dennis of “Dennis The Menace,” I say “Thanks, Mr. Wilson.” I’m not referring to Dennis’ neighbor but Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. The boos are directed toward tennis star Serena Williams and hip hop singer and producer Kanye West.

When the White House launched an initiative to prod backers to forward e-mails from detractors, Marc Rotenberg was vexed.

A frequent critic of President George W. Bush’s domestic intelligence gathering, Rotenberg saw what he considered another assault on Americans’ civil liberties. This time, the move was to gather names of people spreading what the White House called potential misinformation about health care reform.