George Bush just had the kind of week most Presidents can only dream about - his historic victory in the off-year elections, his brother's sweep in Florida, the Security Council's Iraq resolution, the Fed's half-percent rate cut and Harvey Pitt's exit from the SEC.

A President's luck just doesn't get any better, and I believe the country's economic and political fortunes might rise as a result. We might have turned an important corner.

The 107th "Do Not Much" Congress is coming back for a lame-duck session and President Bush has put the legislative focus squarely on homeland defense and economic security as priorities. What happens now?

These midterm elections were hardly a sweep or the stuff of a mandate. And the President has showed the good grace not to use the "M" word.

The Republicans will have a one- or two-seat majority in the Senate and a nine- or 10-seat advantage in the House.

Restoration

In fact, these elections simply restored to the Republicans what Sen. Jim Jeffords took when he defected from the party in June of last year. Most talking heads read the elections as further evidence of a national partisan divide - a split vote between Democrats and Republicans.

What I see looks like real balance. We couldn't ask for a much narrower margin between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill nor a broader representation of the moderate center of voters in this country. That's balance (not division), and it will help (not hamper) the national legislative agenda.

Greg Valliere, political economist and chief strategist with Charles Schwab Washington Research Group, sees legislative progress in the air:

"I think that the seeds of a compromise are in place that would give the Democrats extension of unemployment benefits and maybe even an increase in minimum wage in exchange for some things that the Republicans want, making the tax cut permanent and maybe even passing a package of tax incentives for investors."

Investor relief

Thanks to the past five weeks, investors need less of a boost now. President Bush got his October surprise. The stock market rose in the weeks leading up to the elections and, in fact, the Nasdaq is now up 13%.

Of course, the Nasdaq is still off 73% from its March 2000 high and the Dow down 27%. Investor confidence is at the lowest level in eight years, essentially because of the staggering $8 trillion investors have lost since 2000.

But a good deal of it is the result of a lack of faith in the integrity of the securities markets and corporate America. And the President understands that whoever replaces Harvey Pitt at the SEC will be critically important to solidifying the market's recovery by restoring integrity to corporate America and Wall Street.

I hope the President makes choosing a new SEC chairman a bipartisan effort. He'd add momentum to his legislative initiatives, both political and economic, and lead us around that very important corner.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2002