I hear it’s some kind of big important day out there in election land or something. Though, as usual, Kunstler makes us wonder why anyone would want to preside over what looks, by anyone’s metric, as a growing mess:

       Whoever wins on November 5 will wake up to preside over a different America than the schematic one he was debating about during the primaries and the election. The long campaign will beat a path straight into the long emergency. The new president will inherit a wrecked banking system, an economy in freefall, a wobbling world oil market, and an American public extremely ticked off by its startling, sudden impoverishment. (This is apart from whatever melodramas spool out on the geopolitical scene.)

He also makes a point that no one’s been discussing, one that may well shape the political landscape for decades to come. “The implosion of the U.S. economy during the next eight months,” he writes, “will be laid directly at the feet of the Republican Party. If the party survives that, which I doubt, it would a long time before anybody trusted it again.”

If the economy does implode - as it certainly looks to be doing - it will indeed be blamed on the party that’s been running the show, fairly or unfairly. But then the other party inherits the mess; then it becomes incumbent upon the Democrats to fix the problems. Doing so - demonstrating competence - could overcome all the ideological deficiencies that plague the Democratic Party, the main one being that there doesn’t seem to be any over-arching ideology. One could be created - the over-riding ideology of competence. That, I think, would be more than enough for the American people for a generation or far longer.

But there’s also the very real chance the party or its president could fail - discrediting both parties in the long run. And then what? Depends on how bad things wind up, of course, both in terms of economics and Iraq. But it all shapes up as both a historic opportunity, as well as an exceedingly dangerous one, for the Democratic standard-bearer. For the sake of the country, much less than the party, we might hope he (or she) can measure up.