Are We Doomed No Matter Who Wins?

At first glance it certainly appears that way.

With Friday’s jobs report confirming the weakness of our economic recovery, the fiscal cliff rapidly coming into view, and American influence abroad continuing to erode, someone has to ask: is America doomed no matter who wins the presidential election?
At first glance it certainly appears that way.
Let’s begin by assuming that Mitt Romney ekes out a victory, winning the national popular vote by a point or two and capturing 275 electoral votes or thereabout. If Romney prevails — and I fervently hope he does — it will most likely be by slim margins such as these.
Let’s also assume that Republicans pick up a few seats in the Senate, probably not enough to retake the majority — even with a Vice President Paul Ryan casting a decisive 51st vote — but enough of a gain to render the upper chamber evenly divided, or nearly so. This, too, is the most plausible outcome, as GOP hopes to win the chamber outright have foundered on the shoals of ill-considered remarks by candidates in Missouri and Indiana, among other misfortunes.
And finally, let’s assume the House remains in Republican hands, with slightly diminished numbers, on the order of five seats lost to Democratic challengers. This, too, seems like the most likely result, as recent wild swings in congressional control appear to have calmed this cycle.
In this scenario, the Republicans will hardly be in a position to claim any sort of mandate from the election, as the country will essentially remain divided straight down the middle. Perhaps Romney will have succeeded, as he strove to do in tapping Ryan as his running mate, in making the election “about big things,” engaging the third-rail issues of entitlement and tax reform. But there would be no conclusive evidence that Americans sided with the Romney-Ryan vision if they elect the GOP tandem narrowly.
Without this mandate, how could a President Romney realistically hope to restore fiscal sanity along the lines of fundamentally changing Medicare and Social Security? How could he spur economic growth with broad-based changes to the tax code vigorously opposed by congressional Democrats? And, perhaps most importantly, how could he roll back or gut Obamacare without a Senate majority, let alone a filibuster-proof one?

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/november/are-we-doomed-no-matter-who-wins