The morning after

I went to bed after midnight, feeling dispirited about the Republican beat-down that swept across the country. But you know what? The sun came up this morning. The Earth stayed on its axis. And my neighborhood streets looked as familiar as ever as I went on my morning run.

Even though the GOP rout in the House was one of historic proportions -- and even though, as I write this, we still don't know if Oregonians have elected a Republican governor for the first time since 1986 -- I'm OK with it. Why? For one thing, we all saw it coming. I would have been shell-shocked otherwise, but voter anger was volcanic and impossible to miss. What's still up for debate is correctly identifying the target of that anger: Obama? The Democrats? Incumbents, no matter what their party? Congress? The federal government? It's probably all of that.

There's no question that continuing concerns over the economy, and related worries about the mounting size of the federal deficit, eclipsed everything. We can debate all we want about whether Obama and the Democrats acted responsibly or not in responding to the economic disaster that Bush left behind but, the truth is, there's no objective answer. Judgment is subjective and history ultimately will shine a light on who and what was right, though there will still be plenty of room for other interpretations.

The second thing is that it's now time to put up or shut up. Whether you credit or blame the tea party movement for lighting the spark that ignited this fire, the burden is now clearly on those folks to make the transition from politicking to governing. That's where I have huge doubts -- and it's where I hope I am proven drastically wrong about bipartisan solutions that involve painful fixes to complex policy issues and budget choices.

The morning after is a good time to reflect on how we got here and where we might go from here. And I point to two superb articles in The Economist's (Oct. 30-Nov. 5) issue as exemplary.

The cover story, "Angry America," asserts that the rage directed at Obama is "overdone" -- a charge I completely agree with.

In the non-bylined column called Lexington, the essay "The good, the bad and the tea parties"  accurately portrays the challenge ahead.

"Ideology is one thing. But if the tea-partiers do well...especially if the Republicans capture the House, they need to move past ideology into the realm of practical policy. This means having something serious to say about how actually to bring spending under control. To date, they have preferred breezy slogans. Will they cut into pensions and Medicare, and if so how? Will they accept that taming the deficit will require hikes in taxes as well as cuts in spending? Will they continue to oppose reflexively every measure of a Democratic administration, or have the courage to share responsibility for the painful decisions the times demand? It has been all too easy from the outside to conjure up a mythic America of limited government, sing hymns to the constitution and denounce the federal bureaucracy in all its forms. Once they are in government themselves, that gig will be over."

 Illustration: The Economist.