As an event-filled two-year political season comes to an incredible finish, it is easy to forget that this thrill ride is only a prelude to a Presidency that has all the hallmarks of a big one. There are big problems to solve. There are big coalitions in play for solving it. And there big risks as well.
Most of us have been so focused on the election itself or fun games like who'll fill an Obama cabinet, that we've put aside larger thoughts about what could happen in the next Presidency.
Go below the fold for a few graphs on this topic and I hope more blogs will take on this topic.
Nobody wants to take the election and its outcome for granted. Not at this point. Not after all we've been through.
But no matter who wins the election, we are about to enter a very Brave New World. If McCain somehow wins it will be a truly Brave World that may be ungovernable for a while. Blacks and Liberals will feel the election was stolen and a stifling politics of resentment and reaction will set in before a re-energized progressive coalition gets it together for another try. The risk will be some kind of crisis or series of crises crystallizes into violence and a Hard State emerges and heads us into territory I can't handle thinking about for now.
The usual forecast for an Obama win is to think he will either be a Herbert Hoover who is so over-matched by a bad economy and a bad world position that his administration collapses; or, he will an FDR type who takes on a bum economy and tough foreign policy challenges and masters them. Few of us see a muddle.
I am betting on the FDR outcome and here's why. The Bush Administration's response to the collapse of the international economy has been government intervention and the bailout plan. This is a surprising choice for a Hard Right Republican administration and one might assume that if a Republican like Bush thinks this is our best option, surely a Democrat like Obama would follow along. And so far, Obama has mended the bailout plan, not chosen to end it. McCain has made the same choice.
However, I am struck by a few economists and international affairs types who suggest that ultimately government will play a relatively small role in the real solution to this sub-prime mortgage mess. They suggest that we are headed into a Brave New Post-Government World of policy networks that will handle crises like this mortgage mess. For now the international economy has skidded to a halt because banks and companies can't figure out who among them is legit and who's a fraud, meaning who's sitting on a stack of bad mortgage-based assets and who's clear of them.
Until an honest broker can come along and help the market sort out who's weak and who's strong, the credit economy will continue to freeze up. Having our government buy up bad mortgages is one take on solving this problem and even McCain accepts this logic. That's why he put another $300 billion for an extended bailout at the debate last night.
The plan is that by having the government buy up bad debts, the banks holding the bad debts will have to reveal themselves in order to sell them. That little deal will tell the market who's been naughty and who's been responsible. From there the 'good' banks can begin to make loans to each other again.
But for this deal to work government has to insinuate itself into a bunch of financial policy networks here and aboard. It then has to work as a partner - a first among equals - getting all concerned to talk to each other and coordinate tricky staging maneuvers.
And note this post-governmental policy networking is not traditional capitalism, nor is it socialism. And it will require a temperament that is probably a better fit with Obama's temperament. You know, a community organizer's kind of temperament.
So, I say that after an adjustment period he and his administration figure it out and they pull off an FDR style recovery.
What do you think? Take the poll?