Pennsylvania State Representative Mark Cohen

By Mark Cohen

Running for the Democratic nomination for President on an anti-war platform forty years ago, Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy said something like this in description of his own candidacy: “In times of crisis, the cry goes out for a conventional candidate to lead our nation back to the way things used to be. Fortunately, this time, no conventional candidate was available.”

In this general election, there is once again no conventional candidate available. The last states admitted to the Union: Hawaii (No. 50), Alaska (No. 49), Arizona (No. 48) are represented respectively by Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and John McCain. Joe Biden, from the self-proclaimed “First State” to be admitted to the Union, will the first Catholic Vice-President, and, in all likelihood, the first Vice-President with over three and a half decades of Senate experience.

With no conventional candidate available for the Presidency, hopes are rising high in many circles that the U.S. can drastically change course. Voter registration has broken all records in Pennsylvania and many other states. Whoever wins the Presidency this year will likely break all records for turnout and total votes. I believe this is good for democracy. While low turnouts may indicate voter satisfaction, they do not produce mandates for action. Too many low turnout elections lead to too many low achievement administrations.

This year’s high turnout is due, in part, to the outrage at the rare confluence of disastrous occurrences in both foreign and domestic policy simultaneously. It’s not quite as bad as combining the low points of the administrations of Herbert Hoover (the Great Depression) and James Buchanan (the beginnings of the Civil War), but it’s uncomfortably close in the unraveling of so much past achievement.

The unraveling is inherently of uncertain magnitude. The loss of more than a trillion dollars of national wealth is terrifying even if it is likely temporary. People have no idea how much their homes, mutual funds, retirement plans and various other assets are worth, at what age they can afford to retire, or how much money they can borrow. This is not the kind of situation that reinforces a belief in laissez faire conservatism.

All state and local governments may be faced with unpleasant choices as to what services should be cut and what taxes should be raised. We don’t know that for sure yet–and the record Dow Jones gain on Columbus Day, 2008 is a positive sign - but it is a very clear possibility of what can happen if a contracting economy continues to stop retail sales, job maintenance and new job creation, and regular day to day borrowing.

So to whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain the message is clear. Fix Things.

Mark Cohen is Pennsylvania state representative from Northeast Philadelphia, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and was a Barack Obama pledged delegate to the Democratic National Convention in August.