How Obama and McCain Would Lead

They only look as if they inhabit our galaxy. In truth, the men who would be President have been running for months in a parallel universe, a place where a Chief Executive changes laws by waving a hand and reorders society at the stroke of a pen. “When I am President,” the candidates declare–and off they go into dreamspeak, describing tax codes down to the last decimal point and sketching health-care reforms far beyond the power of any single person to enact. In their imaginary, reassuring cosmos, America is always a mere 10 years–and one new President–away from energy independence. And the ills of the federal budget can be cured simply by having an eagle-eyed leader go through it line by line.

Then one of them wins the election.

In an instant, the winner is sucked through a wormhole back into the real world. A world in which Congress, not the President, writes all the laws and gets the last word on the budget. Where consumers decide which cars to drive and how many lights to burn. And where the clash of powerful interest groups makes it easier to do nothing about big problems than to tackle them. Even the strongest, wiliest, most effective Presidents must change shape and shift direction to accommodate these and other forces.

An ability to alter course without losing one’s way is essential to presidential success. “I claim not to have controlled events,” Abraham Lincoln wrote, “but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” As the sailor President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood, only rarely does a fair wind blow squarely at the President’s back. More typical is the gale blowing from dead ahead or the deceptively strong crosswind. Sometimes the best that one can do is inch forward at an angle while struggling to avoid running aground.

The next President, whether it’s Barack Obama or John McCain, will take the helm amid a maelstrom. Testifying before Congress, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan–not known for his colorful public statements–professed “shocked disbelief” at the “tsunami” that has plunged global finance into disarray. He predicted a deep recession that will cost jobs and devastate balance sheets across the economy–“much broader than anything I could have imagined.” When the chief economic advisers to McCain and Obama met recently for a debate, they found little to agree on. But they shared the realization that the new President’s options will be severely constrained by an economy in turmoil. Douglas Holtz-Eakin conceded that McCain’s promise to balance the budget in four years is off the table. “The events of the past few months have completely thrown a wrench into that–there’s no way round it,” he said. Austan Goolsbee, who counsels Obama, spoke grimly of “the hole we’ve dug” as a nation.

It’s impossible to say exactly how deep that hole will turn out to be–which makes it hard to say exactly how much of the next President’s energy will have to go toward pulling us out of it. And the economy is far from the only unpredictable force the 44th President will contend with. Experts are forecasting a surge in the number of Democrats in Congress that would give Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid the largest majorities either party has had since the early 1990s. This would obviously limit the options of a Republican President McCain. But Congress would be a complicating factor in the life of President Obama too. After all, the Constitution envisions a strong Congress, and that’s just the way committee chairmen like it. After more than a dozen years of being stymied, first by Newt Gingrich and then by George W. Bush, congressional Democrats are bursting with pent-up ambitions and long-deferred dreams. Some are epic undertakings that would affect every American for decades–like the proposal to impose a cap on carbon dioxide emissions and put a price on permits to burn fossil fuels. Or the goal of completely reorganizing the way the U.S. manages health care. Other, smaller projects involve large amounts of controversy–like a bill that would allow federal funds to pay for abortions. And expansion of embryonic-stem-cell research. And a “path to citizenship” for millions of immigrants who are living illegally in the U.S.

Well-funded liberal interest groups will compete to rush their pet causes to the top of this agenda, while conservative groups will use these issues to rebuild their battered bases. Both presidential candidates have promised to lance the boil of partisan demagoguery in Washington, but for many of these interest groups, comity is bad for business. The fracturing of the media into a thousand voices–many of them strident–will further complicate the new President’s efforts to deliver on the promise of a more civil way of doing the nation’s business.

Don’t forget the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the rise of China, the bluster of boom-and-bust Russia, the murky threat of Iran and the accelerating decay of Pakistan. Between the economic crisis at home and the geopolitical cauldron abroad, the new President’s agenda will be largely predetermined. He might wish he could shrug off this dismal inheritance and devote himself to the shiny projects cataloged on his campaign website–but that’s beyond his power.

Finally, there is the strongest, and perhaps the least predictable, force of all: public opinion. As the current President proved, a Chief Executive with two-thirds of the public behind him can steamroll almost any rival influence. In a single year when Bush’s approval rating floated as high as the low 70s, he launched a war, reorganized the Federal Government and passed a vast expansion of Medicare. Forty percentage points later, he’s the lamest duck since Harry S Truman. The public today is anxious, skeptical and dissatisfied. Record numbers say the country is on the wrong track. In this climate, the new President’s honeymoon may be as fragile as a 3 a.m. Las Vegas wedding.

This is the real world the next President is about to enter. How he might respond to the winds of reality–and what tools he’ll have available to weather the storm–differs greatly from one man to the other.

President Obama

“Who is the real Barack Obama?” McCain sometimes asks on the stump. If the election follows the polls of October and the U.S. awakens on Nov. 5 to an Obama presidency, he’ll begin answering that question in the only way that counts: by his actions. Is he the pragmatic champion of the middle class whose calm and moderate tone carried him undefeated through three debates? Or is he the stealth lefty zestfully skewered by Sarah Palin at event after event?

There was a similar unveiling in 1992. Like Obama, Bill Clinton campaigned for the White House on a platform of middle-class tax cuts and a free-market-friendly approach to public policy. The government doesn’t “spend” tax money in the New Democrats’ lexicon. It “invests” in the future. And like Obama, Clinton saw another version of himself painted by the opposition: a pot-smoking, war-protesting, bureaucrat-loving, income-redistributing radical.

When the voters called for the “real” Clinton to take office, he stumbled. His transition team was disorganized. He abandoned his tax cuts and worried about the bond market instead. He pitched into a needless controversy over gays in the military. His crime-fighting proposals were drowned out by his difficulty in finding an Attorney General who had paid all her taxes. He antagonized the White House press corps and seemed unsure in his dealings with the Democrats who ran Congress. He took his eye off the ball overseas and let a police action in Somalia turn into a national embarrassment. The Republicans saw all this, hauled themselves up from the canvas and, led by Gingrich, pounded Clinton and the Democrats in 1994. Eventually, Clinton delivered on much that he promised: he put 100,000 cops on the street, the budget was balanced, “welfare as we know it” was ended, and the economy boomed. But his weak start left him damaged in ways that shaped his entire presidency.

Obama is eager to avoid those mistakes. Within weeks of capturing the nomination, he started planning for the possibility that he would govern. He set up a transition team last summer, led by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, one of the best-connected–and least self-aggrandizing–Democrats in Washington. Podesta’s team is compiling a book of perhaps 50 chapters to use as a blueprint for a new Administration. All this activity opened Obama to criticism from McCain that he was prematurely “measuring the drapes” of the Oval Office. Instead of drapes, though, the Illinois Senator seemed to be thinking of Cervantes, who declared, “To be prepared is half the victory.” Indeed, one of Obama’s striking qualities is that success never takes him by surprise. He’s like a golfer who makes a hole in one and tells his stunned partners, That’s where I was aiming.

But while there is a place in Washington for 50-chapter briefing books, the more important text for Obama could fit on a note card: Clear priorities. Everyone in the capital has a plan for a new President. Unless he sets his own agenda, others will eagerly set it for him. Obama has a lot to choose from. Recently, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, no fan of his, compiled a catalog of promises and programs Obama has made during the campaign. Including documentary quotations, the list ran 85 pages.

Obama recently told TIME’s Joe Klein that Job One is the unknowable task of patching and stabilizing the sinking economy, which makes sense because the power of this issue to shape the next presidency is absolute. The financial crisis has already changed Reagan Republicans into bank nationalizers almost overnight. Presidential-transition expert Paul Light calls this the most harrowing environment for a change of Administration since Lincoln took charge of a country split in two.

After that, his priority, Obama said, is passing an energy bill. Presidents have been talking about reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels for decades. McCain’s embrace of alternative energy has given the issue a bipartisan flavor. And Obama believes that the quest for new engines and fuels for the future will serve as a “new driver” for robust economic growth. (It has happened before–just ask Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.) But momentum alone won’t make it happen. Beneath the surface consensus lies enormous controversy. The cap-and-trade system of charging factories and utilities for permits to burn fossil fuels would be a major intervention in the economy, and opponents will argue that it’s too great a shock to apply to an already ailing patient.

On the other hand, in a period of ballooning deficits, an energy bill has the advantage of seeming to pay for itself. The sale of carbon-emission permits would raise billions of dollars, money Congress could then disperse in the form of grants for alternative-energy research, tax credits for greening homes and businesses, and loans to retool inefficient industries–starting with Detroit’s struggling automakers. Republicans doomed a Clinton-era attempt to do something similar by christening the plan a “carbon tax.” For Obama to succeed, he would have to convince the public that this tax is truly an “investment.”

Meanwhile, the ailing Atlas of congressional Democrats, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, has a different priority in mind for an Obama Administration. Even as he battles brain cancer, Kennedy has been trying to lay the groundwork for a breakthrough on universal health insurance. In his rousing, up-from-the-sickbed convention speech, Kennedy called health-care reform “the cause of my life,” and many congressional Democrats share that zeal. Obama will have to decide whether, in the midst of a recession, Washington can take on two reforms of such historic proportions simultaneously. If, as the early betting predicts, he says no, Obama risks disappointing the liberal base–including Hillary Clinton supporters who were late joining his bandwagon and remain perilously close to the exits.

That said, Obama may have less to fear from congressional leaders pushing rival agendas than did his bedeviled predecessors Carter and Clinton. Those earlier Democrats faced Congresses dominated by complacent chairmen who had never known a GOP majority. Today’s Democratic leaders know what it’s like to lose the perks–and opportunities–of power. Having reoccupied the plush offices of the Capitol, they might appreciate the idea that being in the same party sometimes means staying on the same page.

Then there is the question of taxes. Obama has made overhauling the tax code a centerpiece of his campaign. In the real world of Washington, his plan is a mixture of commonplace steps (tweaking income tax rates) and unprecedented measures (a new approach to payroll taxes). The likelihood that he will get anything like the tax package he has outlined–or even that he’ll seek all the changes he has promised–is remote as long as the economy is struggling. After all, what’s the point of raising corporate taxes when companies aren’t profitable or raising capital-gains taxes when stock prices and real estate values are plummeting? Even a gung-ho tax raiser like Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts acknowledges that the economic climate is wrong. “Not now,” Frank said recently of tax hikes.

What shape would Obama take on the world stage? It’s folly to predict. Events are moving too quickly. When Obama launched his campaign last year, the biggest issue in the world was Iraq. Now the public’s interest–and U.S. involvement there–is dwindling almost by the day. Obama’s bumper-sticker plan for Afghanistan–more troops to catch bin Laden–is being swallowed up in a befuddling tangle of intractable issues, ranging from the Afghan heroin trade to the instability of Kashmir. Foreign policy breeds surprises in American Presidents: Nixon went to China; Reagan proposed nuclear disarmament; Bush changed from “humble” to imperial in a single morning. Compounding the unpredictability is the excitement Obama’s candidacy has stirred in parts of the world. Will the novelty of a multiracial President with a Kenyan name have tangible diplomatic benefits? A scientist would say there are no data.

However, when it comes to the numbers Washington understands best–votes and money–Obama may be stronger, politically, than any other Democrat in years. Thanks to his extraordinary success in building an independent campaign, Obama would sit down with special interests knowing that his mailing list is bigger than theirs and his ability to raise money puts theirs in the shade. A capital that used to be impressed by the Bush family’s thousands-strong Christmas-card list boggles at the millions of names in Obama’s digital address book. If his lead in the polls stands up through Election Day, he’ll win more than 50% of the popular vote–something Bill Clinton never achieved.

President McCain

Like so many trailing candidates before him, McCain recently evoked the memory of Truman’s come-from-behind victory in 1948. More than most, though, McCain actually flourishes as an underdog, and it’s easy to picture him grinning broadly as he brandishes a newspaper–or screen grab–with the mistaken headline OBAMA DEFEATS MCCAIN. Unfortunately, the howling aftermath of a McCain miracle is just as easy to imagine: liberals blaming an eruption of racism; Democrats complaining of a dirty campaign; conspiracy theorists charging voting-machine fraud; conservatives piling rhetorical firewood under the feet of GOP defectors like Colin Powell, Charles Fried and Scott McClellan. “Both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue will be itching for a fight,” predicts Republican insider Ed Rogers. “It will be ugly.”

Americans have shown a taste for divided government in recent decades but maybe not as divided as the early years of a McCain presidency would be. The Republican President would face not only a crowd of resentful Democrats on Capitol Hill but also deep splits within his own party. The closing weeks of McCain’s campaign produced a soap opera of Republican dysfunction. McCain gambled his hopes on a bold move to pass a Wall Street rescue plan. House Republicans cut him loose and defeated the bill, sending the stock market crashing and swinging the momentum to Obama. A steady parade of prominent Republicans jumped ship. McCain’s aides and supporters began the ritual finger-pointing that is the political version of hospice care, while Palin and others dear to the GOP base subtly started jockeying for advantage in 2012.

So President McCain would find himself alone in hostile territory, beset by foes of every variety. Just the way he likes it. If any politician in recent memory could find success in that environment, it might be McCain. All his greatest hits as a Senator are variations on the same theme: If both sides are mad at me, I must be doing something right. His crusade for campaign-finance reforms was opposed by interest groups ranging from NARAL on the left to the NRA on the right. His “Gang of 14” compromise on judicial nominations derailed true-believer hopes on both sides for a spectacular train wreck. His stubborn advocacy for a troop surge in Iraq annoyed the antiwar left and the Bush supporters of the right. McCain understands that the decisive slice of the American public is highly skeptical of both political poles. At his most authentic, he harnesses public opinion to neutralize the extremes.

What works for a legislator–who picks and chooses his battles–might be impossible for a President, however. Given the relentless, unscheduled traffic of crises through the Oval Office, he needs a reliable roster of allies. McCain would probably court the center by appointing some Democrats to his Administration–a move he has signaled throughout his campaign. (He shocked his party when he suggested New York liberal Andrew Cuomo to head the Securities and Exchange Commission and said he would love to have Obama supporter Warren Buffett as his Treasury Secretary.) He might be able to sign a cap-and-trade energy bill–though it would hurt him with GOP conservatives. He might be able to please the right with some judicial appointments–but that would hurt him with Democrats. He could please hawks by rattling his saber at Iran and reach out to doves by using his credibility as the son and grandson of admirals to cut some Pentagon waste.

At a deeper level, the McCain years would see a constant tug-of-war between the President’s pragmatic head and his instinctive, idealistic heart. His impulse to denounce pork barrelers–“I will make them famous,” he likes to promise–would compete with his need to curry favor with as many allies in Washington as he can find. His desire to leave a mark on history–by signing a Democratic energy bill or health-care-reform bill, say–would clash with his gut-level identification with the GOP.

Washington veterans agree that McCain’s conservative ideas for tax cuts and health-care reform wouldn’t stand a chance in a Democratic Congress. But he might enlist enough swing-district Democrats–whose hold on their seats is tenuous–to join congressional Republicans in a grand compromise between the spenders on Capitol Hill and the tax cutters in the White House.

Who would be pulling for him through thick and thin though? No matter how much the Democrats might like striking deals with McCain, in the end they would be planning his demise in the next election. Meanwhile, given his age (72) and the long history of mistrust between McCain and the Republican right, his other flank would be in danger too. Conservatives would probably demand a steady stream of vetoes of Democratic legislation, and any failure to deliver would strengthen his younger GOP rivals. The McCain-Palin relationship would be Washington’s answer to King Arthur and Mordred.

McCain would find himself on a tightrope, surrounded by people trying to push him off. The last President to operate in such straitened circumstances was Richard Nixon. In 1969 he was inaugurated with a weak mandate, shaky popularity, a fractured party behind him and a Democratic majority on the Hill. Lurching left on domestic policy, veering right in his speeches, promising to end the war in Vietnam even as he escalated the bombing, Nixon infuriated his critics and confounded his allies. The roller coaster finally ended with his landslide re-election just as he was stepping off a cliff into disgrace.

A sad fact of contemporary politics is that we’ve lost the ability to get through a campaign without transforming honorable alternatives into cartoons of good and evil. Disagreement is out; denunciation is in. The distinctive tune of our day is hysteria with a drumbeat of hyperbole, all set in the key of bad faith.

Underneath, however, Americans still long for the mystic chords of memory strummed by the better angels of our nature–a patriotic harmony that we like to think is the song of our nation at its best. This is why the two candidates who fared best in this election were the ones who spoke most convincingly about bringing us together. When the two are finally narrowed to one, his mandate will be change, his timetable short and his environment stormy with division. At a historic moment desperate for a successful President, everything will hinge on one man’s ability to navigate by the clouded star of common purpose.

Extra Shots To see more campaign photos from Christopher Morris and Callie Shell, go to time.com/mccain_morris and time.com/obama_shell