Please, could we avoid all the talk about the great new wave that’s coming in American politics, about Tuesday’s “transcendent” and “astonishing” election results, and all the other over-the-top and under-the-bottom reactions?

All that’s happened is that the political tide has just retreated a few inches down the beach.

Instead of hailing still another New Paradigm in American politics, could we instead recognize that a healthy old one is reasserting itself? The party out of power has made some slight gains as the midterm elections approach. It happens. Regular as assuring clockwork. A couple of governorships have changed hands, a congressional election was close. Big deal.

The voters have just begun to sober up after the great outpouring of passions that is a presidential election, and have started to restore a modest equilibrium. It’s a healthy reaction. Like swearing off the intoxicating stuff when the hangover sets in.

The balance wheel of the great constitutional clock clicks into place and begins to turn in low gear. The voters kick out a bum or two and send a message to Washington: Not So Fast. The system still works. Thank you, Messrs. Hamilton, Madison, Jay and distinguished company, not to mention General Washington, the always presiding officer.

Americans still balk at handing any new president a blank check. We still exercise some prudent judgment at the polls. It’s a healthy thing in a republic if it’s going to stay one: a little perspective, even detachment. We’re not entirely a mass democracy yet, thank goodness. We’re not entirely subject to its every fickle fit and whim. A course correction in politics, as in the economy, begins to set in.

The voters seem have spoken with restraint – unlike those certified members of the commentariat who can’t seem to stay away from apocalyptic warnings or millennial projections, depending on their predilections. They tell us either that the country is going to The Other Place in a great big handbasket or that the American Dream has been saved, depending on whether you listen to Keith Olbermann or Dick Morris, those two opposite but equally intense partisans.

It’s clear enough that the people’s sense of unease with the country’s course deepens, but you, Gentle Reader, didn’t need a few elections here and there to tell you that much. All you had to do was read the papers. Or just catch the feeling in the air.

The ship of state steams on through the gathering night, but the passengers begin to wonder if anybody’s on the bridge. The message from below decks may or may not get through to the top, but it’s been sent: Just leaving her on autopilot won’t do. Here and there people are waking up even if the captain isn’t.

Here’s hoping we can all get through the post-election analyses without either triumphalism or panic taking over. The pendulum has just started to swing back, that’s all. A year ago, the late Republican Party was being ceremoniously interred. A permanent Democratic Era was being installed. Now the dry bones show signs of life, and power proves fleeting. So what else is new?

Tuesday’s returns may indicate a certain dissatisfaction with the new president’s policies, but his popularity remains high. There’s no need for Barack Obama to take Tuesday’s election results personally, but he does need to take them politically. It’s not too late to think through this Obamacare thing, including its troubling public option, health czar, onerous tax increases, any federal funding for abortions being snuck into law despite assurances to the contrary, and maybe everything else in that 2,000-page bomb.

Surely the Blue Dogs in the Senate will get the message. Alarm bells are beginning to go off. At this point, the Democratic majority in the Senate may be inclined to stop and take a deep breath before plunging ahead into the vasty deep of government-run health care and its discontents, who now are circling like sharks.

Maybe now’s the time to stop, think, and adopt the simplest, politically safest course: Put the whole thing off till next year. The longer it’s put off, the better chance reason and judgment may have to emerge and sway the final version. There is a touch of panic in the voices of those partisans who want to remodel everybody’s health care NOW! – while they still have the power to do so. Those voices should be ignored. Haste makes not only waste but electoral defeat.

Where the White House should be taking action is precisely where it’s called a time-out: on its war strategy in Afghanistan. It’s still reviewing, revamping, re-evaluating and generally dithering. But the war itself knows no pause. Every day the president and nominal commander-in-chief wonders whether to fish or cut bait or do a little of both (the worst possible decision) is another day American forces and their allies are dodging IEDs, taking casualties, and beginning to wonder what all this is for if the American commander won’t command.

Down below the headlines about the elections the morning after was another: 5 British Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan…. But who in Washington is issuing statements in response to that news?

There is a sphere of government where a slowdown is needed – in this administration’s march toward a centralized economy with all its clanking programs whose effects nobody can safely predict. And there is a sphere where action is overdue and leadership absent – a slow, draining war whose outcome will affect the nation’s security, not to say the world’s. Unfortunately, this administration seems to have confused the two.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.