emergent ink

Confused by this? It was written yesterday, and will be published tomorrow in Citizen News. You’re not stuck in a time warp.

Election Day is behind us, and I hope by now we know who won. I wouldn’t blame the winner if he called for a recount, given what’s facing him in the next four years.

The number one problem for the next four years will be the economy. We are headed for a recession and it looks like it will last for a while.

Some economists think we are in for a repeat, or worse, of the Great Depression.

There was no clear start and end to The Great Depression. We typically think of the stock market crash in October 1929 as the start of it, but the market didn’t bottom out until 1933. And there were continuing problems throughout the 30’s. One of the hardest years was 1937, eight years after the crash that started it, and one year into Roosevelt’s second term.

This is not going to be like the 1930s, when there was a lot more room on the planet, and a lot less people. The U.S. had an unlimited supply of cheap oil then.

That brings me to the second problem: energy. The price of oil has come down a lot after flirting with $150/barrel this summer. One reason is that Americans finally started to adapt to the high price of gas. We’ve been driving less, lately. And we’re driving smarter. New auto sales are down, but sales of the biggest gas-guzzlers – SUVs and trucks – have cratered.

Another factor is the slowing economy. A growing economy needs more energy, but an economy in recession uses less.

Trillions of dollars evaporated over the last few months. Credit dried up. Investors no longer had the ability to play the oil market, or had to cash out in order to cover other losses.

I wrote several times this summer that speculation was not a factor driving the price of oil. It now looks like I was wrong.

That doesn’t mean the only thing driving the price of oil was speculation. It was a combination of factors, and those other factors are still lurking.

America needs to break its addiction to oil. We need to develop alternative energy sources. Yes, we also need to drill here. But all of that has become harder with the collapsing price of oil. Business ventures that were economically viable this summer, when oil cost $140 per barrel, are no longer competitive. That includes everything from drilling in the Bakken Shale to mass-producing solar panels.

We’ve been burning through the federal reserve and running up our debt to bail out Wall Street and get the global financial system moving again. All of this, and the collapsing price of oil, is going to make it extremely difficult for our next president to lead America to a future where we’re not dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

And that brings me to the third problem the next president faces: Iraq.

Actually, Iraq is the easiest thing facing the incoming president.

The world doesn’t wait, not even for the President of the United States. Even Iraq, which looked like the big issue of this campaign a year ago, won’t wait for a new president. A withdrawal agreement that requires U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by no later than June 30, 2009, and from all Iraqi territory by December 31, 2011, was negotiated between the US and the Iraqi government. But the democratically elected government of Iraq won’t sign it. Because Iraqis don’t want it.

U.S. forces will be confined to base after January 1, 2009, when the UN mandate legitimizing operations in Iraq expires.

Inauguration Day is January 20. If they want us gone, then the next president has one less thing to worry about. And many of our troops can start to come home, sooner than expected.

The next president is going to have his hands full anyway, with the global economic crisis.

The next four years will be about the economy and about energy.

I forgot to mention healthcare. And education. If we’re going to fix the economy and get energy independent, we need a fresh focus on a science and technology curriculum that starts as early as possible. We need to get our children better prepared for the future. Build innovation into your education system, and you’ll see more new companies, new ideas, and new jobs here, in the U.S.

I’m writing this on Monday night, so I don’t know how Election Day comes out. And I don’t want to get caught in a “Dewey Beats Truman” moment here.

But I will go as far as predicting that there’s almost a 95% chance that western Pennsylvania has something to say about who wins this election.

That’s because the Pittsburgh Steelers just beat the Washington Redskins.

From 1936 to 2000, every time the Redskins won their last home game before the election, the incumbent party held on to the White House. And every time the Redskins lost their last home game before the election, the incumbent party lost the White House.

It happened seventeen straight times. The streak was only broken in 2004, when the Green Bay Packers beat the Redskins, and Bush was re-elected.

Football games don’t really decide elections. And we could still end up the way we did in 2000, with nothing decided on Election Day.

That would not be good for America. This election has gone on long enough, and we need to get on with the work of the next four years.

I think many Americans would like to put the divisiveness of the past two decades behind us. It’s the only way we’ll be able to solve the big problems that are facing us.

These problems have been building for a while, but we’ve been too distracted with side issues that have nothing to do with federal government.

We’ve gotten stuck in the tar pit of party politics and are doomed to extinction if we don’t find a way out.

There will be those who won’t want to recognize our new president, no matter which guy wins.

It will be interesting to see whether we continue to fight with each other after Election Day, or if we are able to put our country first, settle our differences, and work together. No matter who wins, that is the only way America can survive.