McCain or Obama's First Call Should be to Bush, Paulson and Bernanke

On the eve of this historic presidential election, one thing is abundantly clear. Whoever wins the race for the White house will face a financial crisis not seen since perhaps the Great Depression. Once the votes are counted, victory and concession speeches given, the stark reality of the challenges facing the next president will will be a sobering reminder to whoever candidate prevails that the hard work is just beginning.

What is of the utmost importance is continuity of message and action. The next president should on Wednesday, contact the Bush administration's transition team and ask for an immediate meeting with Treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the entire economic teams of both the outgoing and incoming administrations to discuss the financial crisis. The president elect should also immediately reach across party aisles and begin to mold consensus as to where we are in terms of government reaction to the crisis and where we need to go from here.

With the election over, the time for partisan bickering will be past and it will be time for our elected leaders to actually lead for a change. The Great Depression was not caused by FDR but FDR made it worse by refusing to work with an outgoing Republican administration for fear the Democrats could be saddled with part of the blame. The long period of inaction on the economy allowed the US and the world to plunge into a decades long depression. The reason the election was subsequently moved to November was for this very reason - so the transition period would not be so long between administrations.

So whoever wins tonight, I hope that either McCain or Obama will live up to their campaign rhetoric and reach out to the outgoing administration as well as to their peers in the other party. Both candidates have preached change and both have promised to work across party lines. If any situation merits a fulfillment of these promises, the crisis we find ourselves in today certainly does. This is the time for the our elected leaders to rise to the occasion and for the U.S. to show leadership to the rest of the world. There will be no time to bask in victory. With the election over, now will be the time to get to work.