This is a period of very intense expectancy and fear that something will go wrong among supporters of Barak Obama’s remarkable campaign--fear that the possible victory will somehow be snatched away, that Democrats always lose the close ones, that there is a deep and ugly hidden current of racism that will wash away the victories that seem promised in the polls.
I think that Obama will win, that there will be a huge celebration of a remarkable man and leader, and that after the ebullience there will be a morning after of facing hard realities of terribly challenging situation and a campaign whose end is not promising in terms of the unity we need in the coming months.

The campaign is ending with a beautifully executed strategy by the Obama side, with a burst of
expensive high-quality ads, massive rallies, and a awesome mobilization of volunteers by the Democrats. On the Republican side we see an intense focus on prime conservative themes and a massive effort to frighten the American people, on many fronts, about the person who will probably soon be President. Without knowing the results it seems worthwhile to briefly think about how the campaign’s end tends to weaken the prospects for the country in facing the hard decisions that are coming and how the winner will have to change his agenda..

The McCain strategy has damaged both candidates and the possibility of the unity we need immediately after the election. Both sides, in addition, have acted as if the economic catastrophe will not force severe changes in what they have been promising. The McCain insistence on continuing the Bush tax cuts, pursuing both wars actively, not touching Social Security, etc. while cutting the deficit and slashing completely unspecified domestic programs very massively in an already very thin domestic budget was, of course, the sheerest fantasy even before the economy tanked. Nonpartisan projections showed that this would only multiply the size of the deficit much more than Obama’s plan. Were he to be elected McCain’s already weak link with both parties in Congress would certainly be exacerbated if he were seriously to end all earmarks, his only substantive budget plan apart from a totally unworkable freeze of everything, since one person’s earmark is another’s local economic development and ticket to reelection. He’d probably be a President without a congressional party behind him, even on the minority side. Even the most conservative economists now concede that there must be an expansion rather than a freeze of domestic spending until the economy starts growing again. McCain has spelled out no plausible economic pathway, confused the discussion, and severely damaged the possibility of collaboration between Republicans and Democrats.

On the Obama side, the idea of tax cuts for almost everyone, lots of revenue from the tax increases at the top and a large expansion of medical coverage together with an intensification of the war in Afghanistan doesn’t add up too well at a time when revenues are soaring, the debt is exploding, and the short term need is for rapid stimulus that does not require continued high spending. It is also a time when it will be necessary to find an accommodation among the goals of the congressional Democrats who have been frustrated not only for the last eight Bush years but also for the proceeding six years after the GOP took over the House of Representatives in the l994 election. That’s a full generation of frustrated Democrats on the Hill in what will probably be the most liberal Congress in more than four decades with very little long-term money to spend. In addition, state and local governments in many parts of the nation are facing massive shortfalls that will produce very intense demands for aid as will the unions of their workers who strongly supported the Democrats. Working this all out is going to be something to behold. The beginning of the new administration is almost certain to look a lot different than the campaign statements.

We are going to have fast and furious and expensive and fateful decisions and they are going to be worked out in unpredictable ways between the outgoing and incoming White Houses and a Congress in the midst of major change. We are going to have to turn very rapidly from campaigning to governing, making hard decisions on unknown territory with very large consequences. Some of these things are not going to work and problems not yet know will emerge as the crisis unfolds. Promised priorities are going to have to be modified.

It would be very good if this campaign concluded with a serious recognition of that inescapable fact and a commitment by both candidates to working together on things that matter to the entire nation during the emergency. Instead we see one side bitterly attacking and trying to undermine trust in the man who will likely to be President soon and the campaign that is likely to win endlessly repeating the stump speech without fully laying out what we have lost and what we are likely to lose before we work our way out of international and domestic disasters. And there are many things that neither candidate addressed. Neither campaign has had much to say, for example, about the huge number of poor people who need much more than a tax cut to have any viable future in our society and these people have enormous hopes for a new administration. Their needs are among the huge and long-delayed issues that will come into focus after we do our best to manage the emergency. But first, we must attend to the emergency.

The election campaign has been hypnotically interesting and may mark a major turning point in American politics if the huge mobilization effort of the Democrats builds a lasting governing coalition and a much stronger party organization. We will have to shift, however, almost immediately to governing in the midst of multiple crises. Lets hope that the new President, the losing candidate, and the Bush Administration in its last two months, act as soon as possible to put the campaign behind us and put our energies together to candidly facing the scale of our challenges and to trying, for at least a few crucial months, to pull the country out of the ditch, to make some urgent repairs, and get it running again so that we can then return to more normal methods to address all our other long-deferred needs with the governing coalition that emerges from the election. Lets hope that that such a commitment emerges rapidly in the initial speeches and the days after the election and that we can keep focused through a difficult period rebuilding basic confidence in the future of American institutions.