WHO NEEDS IT?

Posted at 7:16 a.m. ET

Gerard Baker of The Times of London, often quoted here, has had many astute observations on the American campaign.  Today he offers a unique view of what the next presidency might be like.  After reading this, the candidates might drop out.

Whoever wins on November 4 will be ascending to the job at one of the most difficult times for an American chief executive in at least half a century. When the votes are counted his people might ruefully conclude that the victor is not Barack Obama or John McCain. The real winner will be Hillary Clinton, or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or some now happily anonymous figure whose star will rise in the next four turbulent years.

2008 may be the best year there has been to lose an election.

Why?

Consider the challenges.

The financial crisis and Washington's response to it have transformed the economic and fiscal environment in which the new president will take office.

The bailout/rescue plan/ socialisation of the banking system - whichever you prefer - has, in effect, already rendered null and void almost everything that the presidential candidates have been proposing for the past six months. It may not end up adding a straight $700 billion to the deficit over the next couple of years - the Treasury is surely right to insist that it will get some of that money back when the bad assets acquired from banks are sold off. But it would certainly not be prudent to expect there to be any room left over for promised tax cuts, spending increases on health, education or anything else.

But our Barack, The One.  He's not mortal.  He can solve these things.  Can't he?

The US is now indisputably entering the darkest phase of a period that will not only produce real hardship, but could send further shocks through financial markets and cause deeper fiscal damage.

Then there is energy policy. Weaning America off its oil addiction might actually need to be a policy rather than a slogan in the next four years; but that will place new burdens on the budget and require sacrifices difficult to make in good times, let alone in economically distressed ones.

That BUSH.  If he hadn't won Florida, everything would be all right.

The next president has only to complete the process of transition in Iraq, win the war in Afghanistan, face down a resurgent Russia, continue to keep its foot on the throat of stateless Islamist terrorism, stop Iran from going nuclear and figure out what to do about the challenge from China - the most serious threat to US global hegemony since America became top nation.

Oh, and I didn't mention Pakistan. Conversations this week with advisers to both campaigns suggest that both now see Pakistan - especially after last week's terrorist attack in Islamabad - as perhaps the most intractable and serious challenge of all in the next few years: they candidly admit that no one has much of a clue what to do about it.

So they'll call Jimmy Carter.  He knows.

Yet all this might be too gloomy a prognosis. Previous periods of apparently existential crisis in the US have certainly produced one-term disasters: James Buchanan in 1857, Herbert Hoover in 1929, Jimmy Carter in 1977 spring unpleasantly to mind. But the genius of America is that apocalyptic challenges have also, in time, produced the men to match them: Abraham Lincoln in 1861, Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Ronald Reagan in 1981.

He's saying that the candidate in 2012 might have a real chance at greatness.  I suspect Hillary has already clipped this column and posted it over her bed.

Dennis Kucinich probably has it framed. 

Oh, by the way, the Mayan calendar says the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012.  So why bother winning that year if you're not going to make it to inauguration?  I mean, if the world ends, where do you go to vote?  They'll count you only in Chicago.

September 26, 2008.