Don't just do something, stand there

Noemie Emery wrote in The Weekly Standard Refusing to take Ronald Reagan's famous advice--don't just do something, stand there--conservative machers are all in a swivet, reading the leaves of the 2008 verdict, plotting to pick off this or that set of voters, opining on what it all means. Actually, just standing there seems like a pretty good option, at least for the moment, and perhaps for the next few weeks and months. Plans made right now may turn out to be useless. There are too many things we don't know.

I agree. And the Dems are going to over react and over extend themselves. We just don't know whether Obama will be blamed, or whether Congress will, or both.

We don't know yet what happened on Tuesday, and what kind of win it will be: a pivotal one, like 1932 and 1980; or a transient success--1964, 1976, 1988, 2004--that at the moment appeared monumental, but four years later had turned out not to be.

I tend to think it will be the later, but the Dems will think it was the former.

How much of the glow now surrounding the Democrats is due to themselves, and how much to the nature of Barack Obama, who has a personality that comes along twice in a century, and how long will this last? Which Obama will turn up to govern, the man of moderate temperament, or the functional liberal, whose record is way left of center?

His advisors are urging him to stay in the center, but will he have the intlligence, and the gonads, to do so.

When the phone rings for real at three in the morning, who will pick it up: the oh-so-cool cat who was so self-possessed while campaigning, or the neophyte who, outside of campaigning, has never faced a real test in his life?

And will he set the phone to call forward to Hillary or Biden?

How big will the recession be, and will he prolong it?

I am afraid we are talking Depression.

Will he gain or lose ground in the war on terror? Will we have a new terror attack?

As Biden said, within the first 6 months. A year at the most.

If he governs well, he will win again in the next go round, and nothing done now will change it; if he blows a big test on the world stage, then nothing will save him. No grand schemes hatched now will change that.

Gaius blogged Remember, the Democrats won big in 2006 in Congress. They proceeded to drive the approval rating of Congress into the sewer. Yes, Obama won by promising things he has no way of delivering. It is only a matter of time until people realize they bought more snake oil. Wait for the right moment.