This week, the Senate will debate whether it's time to rescue Main Street as well as Wall Street.

The Beltway poison began almost before the dancing stopped early Wednesday morning. Obama has to be "cautious." This is still a "center-right nation," Bill Kristol wrote. "The country remains very evenly divided," says Clinton adviser Harold Ickes. Obama had better lower his sights, ignore the "liberal" Congress and liberal lobbies and govern from the center.

The air crackles with anticipation. Fingers are crossed. It gets hard to breathe. Hope, for so long locked in a closet, begins pounding on the door.

Who can do this job? As Barack Obama verges on a historic victory next week, it is clear he will inherit the desert: Costly and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A global economic downturn. A financial system choking on its own excesses. Broken health care. Unaddressed catastrophic climate change. Gilded age inequality and rising poverty. A collapsing infrastructure. Public education starved for investment and reform. A failed global economic strategy. This list can go on. He inherits the ruins left behind by what he correctly calls a "failed philosophy."