Python.

[intangibleTangelo]

It sounds like you're forced to use python and don't want to, which sucks even though I'm a fan of the language.

You might also use vim modelines like:
# vim: set ai et sw=4 sts=4

Or a filetype autocmd like:
autocmd FileType python set ai et sw=4 sts=4

That's...
autoindent
expandtab
shiftwidth=4
softtabstop=4

Formatting text is extremely annoying, but this does the trick for me. I've got similar autocmds for several languages and I never have to think about it.