Maybe

Maybe this election will really make a difference. Let's continue -- maybe just for today -- to be exhilarated by the hope that maybe we'll get it right this time.

Maybe Americans -- not "bases", not partisans, nor segments, nor demographics -- but us, Americans, will recognize that no one voted for Democrats or against Republicans. At least not in affect.

Maybe we'll quietly remember what every one of us learned in grammar school: that checks and balances, the real American way, is the distinctive innovation of our strange and difficult democracy. And checks and balances is what won on Tuesday.

Maybe Republicans will pause after six years of single party rule, and honestly explore who they are and what they offer, other than domination of the political landscape and control of the electoral map.

Maybe Democrats will be humbled by their often razor thin wins, and take up the mantle of responsibility and not the mantle of power. They might, for a minute least, focus on the best interests of the nation and the world, not merely on their prospects for 2008.

Many said that if power (at least in the House) did not shift, given the public mood and desire, our democracy was broken to an unprecedented and catastrophic degree. Well, power did shift and our democracy is funtioning, if feebly.

Maybe we will rehabilitate it further, and strident voices on right and left will stop or slow or simply murmur for a moment. All honest people see that the world and the country are in a very bad way, and maybe now a true and blameless effort will be made to find a footing that restores America's prestige and destroys her enemies.

Maybe everyone, elected and elector, will sincerely pause and think of the soldiers dying and being maimed as we read this (two more announced last night as power shifts between men at the Pentagon). Maybe we will be smart and creative , great and powerful enough to both end their ordeal and ensure its meaning.

But none of those things will happen. We're smart and savy and know that it is the euphoria of the victor , mixed with the dejection of the defeated that makes the bitter brew of politics that festers in government and media and institutions.

Of course we knew it will soon go back to the business-as-usal rancor and extremism that no one but the sadly never irrelevant fringe really wants. We've already been told what to expect -- they are telling us now on every TV, op-ed page and blog: the stubborn and certain president tortured for two years by a frenzied opposition temporairly empowered by a tiny margin.

Or maybe not.