During Transition, The Nation Waits For Leadership

We've all heard the one about how the country can only have "one president at a time." But right now, would you say our problem is having too much leadership at the top or too little?

In the three weeks since Election Day, President-elect Barack Obama has taken pains not to seem overeager to take office. Making few public appearances, he has declined to attend the meeting of the G-20 countries and has demurred when asked to make pronouncements beyond the naming of his Cabinet and other top advisers.

President Bush, for his part, has receded so far from the prominent place he once filled in the national life that at times he seems to have left office entirely. He turns up in Lima, Peru, at an international conference. Back at the office, he hosts the usual mix of foreign dignitaries and trophy ceremonies. He occasionally tells the reporter pool the economic situation is "tough" but assures them the nation "will recover."

What can he do? The system requires him to hold office for 11 weeks after being repudiated and replaced. The interim is intended to give the successor time to repopulate the top echelons of power and choose a private school for the kids. But it is excruciating for the holdover officeholder, and it has to be one of the cruelest ways we Americans reveal our secret contempt for our pols.

Meanwhile, Bush appointees such as Henry Paulson at Treasury and Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve continue to run the government as it affects the economy. They are making big decisions, committing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. But if they are taking any orders from the chief executive, or following any plan devised within the White House, it has not been apparent to anyone — public sector or private.

Instead, Paulson, Bernanke & Co. have searched frantically for the right mix of mercy and discipline to restore order in the credit, commodity and equity markets. Seen as saviors by many in the early fall, they seemed decidedly mortal this month as the chaos seemed to expand all around them.

Right around mid-November, the need became acute for presidential leadership -- the indispensable constant in the American system since George Washington. And in that post-election moment, Mr. Bush, the lame-duck incumbent, was uniquely disqualified to provide what was needed.

No surprise, then, that a rattled and disbelieving nation has increasingly turned to a new savior in the person of the president-elect. Until recently a stranger to most Americans, the New Man has been brought on stage to perform miracles. And the audience is getting impatient for him to begin.

How anxious are people for new hope? When it became clear last week that the new secretary of the Treasury would be Timothy Geithner, the talented president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Dow recovered several hundred points in less than an hour. At the start of the new week, the "Geithner bounce" continued to buoy a market that has been almost entirely bereft of upbeat news since summer.

It has been some time since so much portent was attached to every move of an incoming president. Even the "Reagan Revolution" 28 years ago brought its sea change more gradually, amid great anticipation but no comparable sense of crisis. The Americans held hostage in Tehran would be released on Inauguration Day, as it turned out, but the new president and his team were not involved in the negotiations.

You have to go back 76 years, to the winter of 1932-33, to find a comparable conjunction of economic turmoil and political power shift. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in November but did not take the oath until March (thanks to the old inauguration schedule, set when new presidents came to town by horse and buggy).

In that four-month interregnum, President Herbert Hoover struggled with mounting bank failures (and a restive Democratic Congress pining to see its own man installed in the White House). Between the Wall Street crash of 1929 and inauguration 1933, one-fifth of all American banks failed. The rate was worsening when FDR took the oath and promptly declared a four-day bank "holiday" to forestall further failures. It was the beginning of the reign of improvisation.

And, lest we forget, when Abraham Lincoln was elected in November 1860, the South considered it a gauntlet on the ground. South Carolina seceded the following month, and six more states did the same before Inauguration Day. Now that is a crisis.

The current president-elect does not confront the dissolution of the Union or the immediate collapse of the banking system. He does, however, face the greatest strain on economic faith in at least a generation. So it is good that he comes to power on a wave of popular and electoral success. Early polls show that the country approves of Mr. Obama's election and transition to power. In fact, the proportion that approves of him so far is slightly larger than the proportion that actually voted for him.

This is a good thing. Perhaps the country cannot have more than one president at a time, but neither can it afford to have confidence in fewer than one.