McManus: This is the last column about Trump from me. (Maybe.)

And while we’re listing virtuous names, there’s also … me.

A few weeks before the election, I wrote that while Republicans appeared likely to win the House, “control of the U.S. Senate sits on a razor’s edge.”

Was I prescient? No, just cautious. I was following Barabak’s advice: It’s dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future. I had learned that lesson the hard way in earlier elections when I made a few forecasts that were laughably mistaken.

This New Year’s column is normally my annual exercise in humility, a look back at where I fouled up during the year that just ended. But in 2022, to my surprise, I made fewer boneheaded errors than usual — mostly by avoiding unnecessary guesses.

I did get some things wrong, of course.

In early November, I warned that candidates who endorsed former President Donald Trump’s election denialism were about to sabotage the process. “Just as in 2020, we’re in for a drawn-out election week, followed by election month — or even months,” I wrote. I was mistaken. Most of the deniers who lost conceded quickly — in some cases, even gracefully.

I was also wrong about Ohio when I wrote that the seemingly close Senate race between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance looked like a mirror of the nation’s political evolution. Ohio turned out to be a reflection only of Ohio, a former swing state that is now reliably red. Vance won easily.

Since I was making fewer predictions, I had time to try out a new line of work: offering free advice to political leaders. Most of them ignored it.

I also got a few things right.

I noticed as early as April that Xi Jinping’s “zero-COVID” policy was doing serious damage to China’s economy. “The juggernaut that once looked bound for global domination is slowing down,” I wrote in September.

In May, I profiled Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose brand of Trumpism has made him a rising star in the Republican Party. “Democrats should be worried,” I wrote.

And in September, I noted that Trump, with his never-ending hunger for attention, was an election-year problem for the GOP.

“When the debate is about Biden and the economy, that’s good for Republicans,” I wrote. “When the debate is about Trump, that’s good for Democrats. Trump doesn’t seem to understand that, but Biden and the Democrats do.”

Every time I write about Trump, I get complaints from readers — not only from Republicans who hate it when I call their former leader a threat to democracy, but also from Democrats who object that I’m giving him free publicity.

Here, as a gift to those readers, is my New Year’s resolution: fewer columns about the 45th president.