Taking November's lessons to heart

It was a long, bloody fight. The candidates in this year's presidential election may have managed to keep the race relatively clean and issue-focused, but the scale of the conventional warfare was colossal. Especially on the left, the mobilization of human and financial resources was unprecedented. The media coverage of the roaring struggle and the titanic personalities waging it began earlier than ever. As voters, we have the right to feel a little hung over.

By now, of course, the historic conclusion needs no further description. Scenes from Barack Obama's seismic victory saturated headlines and airwaves for days after the fact. Those floodwaters have receded. What remains are burning questions about the future of our country and the world.

What should we take away from this election? What can we expect from the new order that our leaders-to-be have promised us? Making anything but the vaguest of predictions would be silly and futile. But the outcome has broadcast some resounding messages to an audience that spans the globe:

To the GOP: The world has changed, radically, since 2001. It's time to own up to the role you played in precipitating the crises that now snap at our heels. You were unseated from power because you offered us nothing substantially different from your past policies; you insulted our intelligence by trying to re-package your disastrous agenda as something new and we didn't buy it.

Don't think that salvation lies with those rabid, quaking throngs that came out in support of your hollow-headed excuse for a vice presidential candidate--that base is shrinking faster than you know. And if there is ever an appropriate time to use trivial "wedge" issues like abortion, gay marriage, and sex education to weasel your way back into power, it is certainly not now. If you can't win Americans' favor with a meaningful economic and foreign policy platform, then you don't deserve to run this country.

Rather than falling back on your ruined past, look to the future. While the Democrats won comfortably this time around, they owe their victory to the overwhelming support of independents, not the left-wing rank-and-file. You will not reach these people with stale allusions to Reagan or foaming evangelical rhetoric. It is time to re-tool your ideology for the 21st century. In the mean time, you will be serving a much-deserved term in the minority. Use your time wisely, to regroup and to reorder your priorities.

To the Democrats: Don't let this go to your heads. Your victory was decisive, but it was far from being a mandate. Don't make the same mistake the Republicans made--if you want to put together a new order in Washington, you will need to do it in an independent-minded, bipartisan manner. Your rule should be fair and respectful of the opposition, and you should govern as if you represent the whole of America, not just the half that elected you.

There are two ways to fix the mess left by the Republicans. The first involves swinging the political pendulum to the opposing liberal extreme. The second involves working across party lines to develop a new, intelligent, centrist agenda for the country. The first plan of action merely corrects the problem of your predecessors being conservative, the second addresses their crime of being stupid.

You should take the latter course. This might involve making concessions to the right at the expense of upsetting the most radical members of your own ranks. Don't be afraid to piss off labor if you need to appeal to business owners; don't worry about upsetting green-bloods if clean coal or nuclear energy look like viable solutions.

This isn't the 1960's, and socialism is not the solution. What America needs now is a brain, not a heart. Learn to recognize that, and you will win over the moderate independents who may have hesitated to put you in office.

To the world: America is not a self-loathing country. Don't expect us to apologize for the last eight years. Instead, rejoice in knowing that American power is likely to soften, rather than wane, under President Obama.

George W. Bush was a sad exception among American policymakers, and to write the eulogy of American primacy based on his example alone would be a gross distortion of history and contemporary reality.
Hopefully, this election highlights that the American system and way of life are not things to be feared or despised. For all of our foibles, we are a country that works constantly in earnest to re-make itself.

Contrary to the criticism hurled our way by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ours is not a government reserved for Anglo-Saxon Protestant good ol' boys in smoke-filled rooms. In electing a candidate as uniquely global as Barack Obama, we've shown that America is, above all, a place where merit and hard work reign supreme over any color or religion.

To the American People: This election alone will not heal the country. Obama's ability to energize such an impressive movement--especially among the rising generation--represents an opportunity, not an assurance of success. With new leadership, we'll have a remarkable chance to overturn our recent blunders and to repaint our image in the world, but we are guaranteed nothing. We should continue to demand an intelligent, conscientious, and transparent government, and prepare to make sacrifices ourselves. We ought to apply the same level of scrutiny to the Obama Administration as we did their predecessors. True change will come from cooperation, ingenuity, and concrete action, but more than anything, it will come from a noisy and demanding public.

That said, many of Obama's enunciated positions, particularly on the economic front, may be ill-informed or unsound. Though it is easy to bow to populist, redistributive dogma in times of crisis and turmoil, we should be careful that our approach doesn't stifle productivity, innovation, or growth. After all, these are the tenets on which American economic prowess has been built; we cannot reclaim our status as a global engine of prosperity without them. We should insist that our new leadership develop an economic agenda that respects our rights to our property and a free and open market. Otherwise, it is unlikely that our loftier plans--like overhauling the energy infrastructure--will succeed.

Finally, we need to recognize that a new political era will soon be upon us. The transformative nature of this election comes not just from the remarkable outcome but also from the participants who made it possible. That young voters came out in the largest numbers since the passage of the 26th Amendment shows that a new generation is beginning to take hold of our nation's direction. Mr. Obama, like the Millenials who backed him, is too young to be tainted by the divisive legacy of the 1960s, and his success signals that America may yet outlive the cynical politics of the Vietnam generation.

Older Americans should welcome the end of their own tumultuous epoch; it is critical now that they clear the way for the next wave of leaders. Those of us voting in our first or second election, on the other hand, ought to heed Barack Obama's calls for reconciliation and bipartisanship, even if the president-elect doesn't always live up to his own words. We need to make it our business to not dismiss the ideas of "Hope" and "Change" as hollow rhetoric. If the rising generation can truly embrace unity and optimism like our parents never did, then we will give those principles the substance and power they deserve.