In the early hours of Nov. 5, the nation watched and listened to two very gracious speeches from two presidential candidates.

One was cheerful and chipper and was greeted with cheers. The other was solemn and sober and was greeted with tears.

The cheerful candidate had just lost, the somber one had just won.

Sen. John McCain's concession was cheerful because that is his nature, but also because he was freed from the burden of attempting to control a fractious campaign.

He can now return to a role he does very well, the maverick senator who wears no man's collar, and give up the task that he performed poorly, managing a national campaign.

Even in his final speech he was required to quiet inappropriate booing from the crowd.

He was always a better man than his staff or his supporters. He will not regret his effort, but he likely regrets the nastiness and outright calumny practiced by others in his campaign.

President-elect Barack Obama can whip up a crowd into wild, adulatory cheering, but he did not unleash that arrow on Nov. 5. He controlled the mood of the crowd as he controlled his campaign, and will control the executive branch.

He is truly an extraordinary figure in our nation's political history. But he knows the difficulties the nation faces and the difficulties he himself faces in the months and years to come.

There will be no quick fix, no easy answers.

In my years of government service I noted the truth of this statement: First rate leaders pick first rate subordinates, but second rate leaders pick third rate subordinates, who in turn pick fourth rate subordinates. In my opinion, the latter was the George W. Bush experience.

Obama is picking his team of first raters. Obviously, near the end of his campaign he knew that victory was in his grasp, and was quietly considering resumes.

Nevertheless he, like the late President Eisenhower, will end up with some imperfect picks, and my hope is that, like Eisenhower, he will eliminate them without delay.

A great part of success as a leader is to recognize one's own missteps early and correct them without hesitation.

More difficult will be managing expectations. Not only his national supporters but many around the world view him as some sort of miracle man, a transcendent figure who like King Midas can touch any object and turn it into gold.

He knows better, and there was reason for him to be sober on the night of his victory.

McCain looked for help in all the wrong places, and yet perhaps this was a service also. We may never again see the nastiness of the Karl Rove approach from either party in the future.

But one of McCain's mistakes may live on to haunt the Republican Party in the future. I could pick a dozen Republican women of my acquaintance here in Carroll County whom I would trust more in national office than Gov. Sarah Palin.

In Carroll County and in the 6th Congressional District things went about as usual.

Locally we need to look hard at recruiting candidates for the future. Sometime soon Rep. Roscoe Bartlett may want to retire. In a little over a year the two parties will need to come up with strong candidates not only for the 6th District but for five county districts.

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