No time to rest, election winners — the real work fixing this mess starts now

CHICAGO — If we've learned anything from the midterm election, it's that neither political party has an unrelenting grip on the confidence of the American people. And that hope lives on — hope that the newly elected can pull off the stunt that the last cast of players flubbed: providing leadership.

Every pundit, politician and their mothers have pointed out that Tuesday's numbers don't necessarily mean the country has swerved to the right. In the days before the counts were tallied, the consensus was astounding — really, how often does one see Arianna Huffington and Jeb Bush agree on anything?

Huffington told ABC News that Americans should not fall into the trap of over-interpreting a Republican victory: "(It) does not mean that the nation is rejecting Democrats and affirming Republicans — it means that they are rejecting the way our institutions are working, that they have a deep mistrust of all establishments and that basically our system has not worked for them."

Bush, the former Florida Republican governor, had a similar take in an interview with The New York Times: "The looming victories for Republican candidates ... is not a validation of the Republican Party at all." He went on to say that the real message was one of "disgust with the political class" for not cooperating on kick-starting the economy and getting people back to work.

Not only are these statements conciliatory and politically correct at a time when we need some national civility, they also happen to be true. What we saw on Nov. 2 was a wave of angry, unsure voters who had to struggle to discern which candidate was the lesser of two evils and in many instances took a chance on an unknown quantity rather than keep the same-old, same-old.

There's nothing wrong with this — it's the whole point of our democracy to be able to switch it up when things aren't working.

But now that the winners have been sorted from the losers, who will actually lead? Who will take the chance they've been given and inspire their colleagues to fix our public institutions and get the nation back on the path to prosperity?

For the Democrats, will these election results get them to stop blaming Republicans, and especially former President George W. Bush, for everything and focus on reaching across the aisle to get things done?

Will the Republicans finally formulate a game plan that involves something more than merely tearing President Obama to shreds and attempt to work toward the meaningful changes the voters have asked them for?

We'll see who has got the guts. Angry America has finally hit bottom and the only way to go is up — but we need to be rallied toward it.

"What this country needs is a renewed sense of unity, a feeling that we can believe in ourselves as a nation again," Joe Caruso, an organizational change expert and author of "The Power of Losing Control," told me. This book should be required reading for both new and returning legislators who need some practical advice on how to let go of past stumbles and use influence to actually get things done.

"Americans used to have incredible optimism, but it has faded these last few years," Caruso said. "Today we need leadership that will give the American people not a 'things have always gotten better, so they'll get better again' complacent optimism, but an optimism with a sense of duty to get focused and work hard."

Newly and currently elected leaders will have it only slightly less awful than how things looked in November 2008, so there will be no lack of opportunities to prove they can deliver on their promises of no more "government as usual." After all, the people have spoken and that's the one thing they've all asked for.

Esther J. Cepeda's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com